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

[John Summerfield]

> On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
> > > On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
> > > > Most times I can find an rpm created for Red Hat, though often for the 
> > > > wrong version.
> > > And hence rarely better than a tarball, and usually worse.
> > I can type rpm --rebuild a darn sight faster than I can untar and read the 
> > instructions.
> 
> It's been a while since I RPMed seriously, but doesn't this just take a
> source package and build then install it? Don't the files still end up in

If configured properly, rpm it installs it into temporary files. Prudent 
users do not build rpms as root; I have seen some do undesirable things.

> whatever silly place the person who made the RPM put them? Doesn't it
> modify your package database in ways that may conmflict with the official
> Redhat packages you want to install or uninstall in the future?
> Still, as long as it prevents you having to read the instructions...

I've never had an rpm put things in bad places, but then most of the rpms 
I install are updates of official RHS software. Others are not official 
RHS softwae, and so are not subject to being clobbered by official RHS 
updates.

> 
> > > that's an _advantage_ over unofficial RPMs. You put the files where
> > > they are, so you know what to remove. Who knows what an unofficial RPM
> > > might do?
> > rpm --erase removes it.
> > rpm -ql lists all its files.
> And by the time you've found out exactly what it's putting where and
> changed them to sensible places and parsed the install script and written
> things down so you can check that the uninstall script is sane before you
> run it and clean up after it, you could have just plonked a tarball
> somewhere sensible and configured it so as not to conflict with the rest
> of the carefully-managed system, with a few minutes left over to skim over 
> the instructions, or perhaps do something more important if you're as busy
> a person as John is.

That's entirely nonsense.

> 
> > > > I use RHL because it works.
> Does it though? I'd be astonished if your haphazard approach to installing
> third-party RPMs hasn't led to things breaking down here or there. Have
> you ever reinstalled a Linux distribution?

I have reinstalled, but always by choice in preference to upgrading. Most 
recently after a HDD died & in installed RHL 6.1 to a new HDD rather than 
6.0.

One of the impediments to uprading another box is software that's 
installed (and working) that is installed from a tarball.
> 
> > > > I don't expect I'd recoup the time converting if I did convert to
> > > > something else.
> > > You might be surprised. Probably depends how much and how many Linux
> > > systems you use, and whether they are production/development/stuff-around
> .
> > If I were employed to look after a few thousand of them, it might be 
> > different.
> If you were employed to admin just one box, it would be different. Well,
> OK, it should be different - you might have a boss who uses windows and
> thinks DLL hell is a natural part of system administration, but your
> conscience should step in in that situation. :)
> 
> > > > If I install another vendor's distro, it will because of something else
>  
> > > > packaged with it.
> > > If something is packaged with only one distro, I wouldn't touch it. :)
> > > OK, so that's a generalisation, but still a rule of thumb.
> > Caldera has shipped stuff not available from others at times; I think it 
> > recently had SO included, and cost heaps less than RHL.
> Well, apart from my inherent distrust of non-free bloatware like SO... I
> though most of the distros included it, though many will of course have a 
> core distribution of Free software?

There was a first, and I think it was not RHL.

> 
> > If I wanted to upgrade to a new release and xxxxdist has Oracle and I want 
> > to play with Oracle, getting xxxxdist makes sense.
> Does it? Oracle is, AFAIK, completely distribution-independent, so it'd be
> a very poor basis on which to choose distributions.

It takes white a while to squeeze through a modem, and then there's a 
bunch of tarballs ammounting to some tens of Mbytes sitting on HDD in case 
it's needed again.


-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
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