[plug] re opening linuxconf

[Beau Kuiper]

On Sat, 5 May 2001, The Thought Assassin wrote:

> On Sat, 5 May 2001, Beau Kuiper wrote:
> > although I like the idea of package management, I find it rather hard to
> > use because:
> > 1) I keep breaking the system. I killed the debian apt system by using
> > Cntl-c to stop a package install.
>
> Eeeg. That's not a good idea, but it wouldn't typically leave the system
> in an unrecoverable state? Might take some understanding of the packaging
> system to make it consistent again, though. :(

Or lots of time, like what apt wanted to rebuild. apt should notice when I
press control-c, and make sure things are consitent before exiting.

>
> > 2) I find that I wan't to compile packages with different settings than
> > the package has.
>
> Which package-management system stops you from doing that? Obviously you
> will have to take a little care of your configuration, but still not as
> much care as you must with no package management at all.

Any package system that insists on being too automatic, and installing
binaries by default. Using no package system isn't hard at all actually.
You don't actually need to install most programs to test them out. Simply
compile them and if you like it, run make install. Huge programs, like KDE
get placed in /opt/<really big package name>

Also, package systems make it harder to install multiple versions of a
program, or muliple copies of the same program with different compile
configurations. Just because you don't need to do any of this stuff,
doesn't mean I don't do it day in and day out.

>
> > In short, I am a control freak, at least on my computers
>
> So why are you running all these programs that other people wrote? ;)
>
> -Greg Mildenhall
>
For the same reason I didn't design and manufacture the components in my
computer.

:-)
Beau Kuiper
kuiperba at cs.curtin.edu.au