[plug] Controversial comparison of distros?

[Cameron Patrick]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 04:05:51PM +0800, sscott at iinet.net.au wrote:

| Get over it and get on with the job. At this point, further division is 
| destructive

Why is it a problem if different distributions use different package
formats?  Diversity is a good thing in technology just as it is in
nature (apparently; I'm no biologist... :-P).  In particular, installing
packages intended for another distribution is asking for trouble, and
sometimes an easy way to screw up an otherwise-working system.  In the
rare cases where it /is/ necessary to install a package in a format that
is not the native one, tools like alien exist to convert them.  (I have
no idea how successful they are; I've never used alien before.  Or used
Red Hat for any significant amount of time, for that matter.)

Debian has had its debs and Slackware its tar.gz's for long before RPM
was around.  There is no reason for - and in fact, significant intertia
opposing - either to change, or for any new distributions to adopt RPM
simply because it is popular when other options may be technically
superior.

Cameron.

PS.  Would like to clear up some confusion that people seem to be
displaying on this list: comparing "RPM" to "APT" is generally utter
nonsense.  RPM is a package format, comparable to Debian's DEB packages.