Open SUSE 10.3

I get orders for a box with Open SUSE installed. Someone needs to build a piece of software on this box. 

"The source will not build on Open SUSE. Shouldn't it work out of the box?" says he.

"No." says I. "We only support SLES, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, not Open SUSE. They are two different animals.

"They should work together." says he.

"We do not support Open SUSE." says I. 

"Shut up and make it so!" says he.

I already ranted about having to format my USB drive as NTFS and use Ubuntu to move it off to the network to burn it and ending up with corrupted image that would not install. I downloaded the DVD ISO from multiple spots with the same result. I tried tot get the admin to transfer it thinking it was my cobbled together USB key. It was not. I ended up downloading the CD ISO and that one worked.

Well, it kind of worked. The online repositories are apparently missing something. There are a ton of bad dependency problems that barf errors. You have to go through this "How would you like to handle this problem?" questions and you have shed loads of choices, none of which work except "Force run.". That one kind of does the job.

So, I call the guy to come get his 3 day train wreck of a machine and he tels me "We told the people we don't support Open SUSE. We don't need the box any more."