You asked why some obvious applets are missing in YaST2. I don't know because I lost interest in Novell SuSE but it is possible that the applets that you didn't find in OpenSuSE would be available in their retail versions. I think that Novell is positioning OpenSuSE to serve as a demo desktop distribution with the idea that if you want more you may find it in their non-free versions. If that is the case then it makes sense that they would not include server service configuration tools in a desktop distribution. I'm just speculating but it makes sense to me.

I was always positively impressed with YaST2. I had worked with Unix and Linux distributions for a long time and had to do things the hard way, learning which configuration files to edit or create for each function. That is just stupid. YaST2 was the first good Linux system administrator's tool that I found. (I discovered SuSE Linux just before Novell purchased them.) I loved SuSE Linux mostly due to YaST2.

These days I'm using PCLinuxOS which uses the system administration tool from Mandriva. I'd say that the Mandriva system configuration tool is very comparable to YaST2. The thing that I like about it, as it is used in PCLOS v93a, is that you can easily configure wireless network cards. This area is one of the last sticking points keeping people from using Linux on notebook computers. Heck, I didn't even try to configure the wireless network card on my own notebook before I tried PCLOS. It just seemed like too much trouble, and I've been using Linux for a long time.

In summary, YaST2 is very good. It is possible that the retail versions of SuSE would include the server service configuration applets that are apparently not inluded in OpenSuSE. My preference these days is for PCLOS, but we'll see if that remains the case when the new PCLOS (v94) is released. I'm nervous about what functions PCLOS might lose with the new version.