Why I use Debian. Was Re: [plug] Mandrake - printing

[John Summerfield]

> In the absence of an official package, I'd rather download a raw tarball  
> and install everything in /usr/local/foo, then make the requisite
> modifications to the system myself. That way, I know how my system differs
> from a standard system, and what I have to remove when the time comes.

Most times I can find an rpm created for Red Hat, though often for the 
wrong version.

I often download source rpms and build them here; that gives me rpms with 
the correct libc.

AFAICR, I've only downloaded two non-RH rpms; one was for Caldera and 
Caldera has a nonstandard rpm with the result the spec file had to be 
fixed. Another was for Mandrake and that built & installed no worries.


The big disadvantage of tarballs is that rpm doesn't know what files it 
installs, so upgrading & removing are both more difficult.


I use RHL because it works. I have no problem with folk using other 
distros, however, I don't expect I'd recoup the time converting if I did 
convert to something else.

If I install another vendor's distro, it will because of something else 
packaged with it.


-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.