[plug] Controversial comparison of distros?

[Cameron Patrick]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 10:31:03AM +0800, sscott at iinet.net.au wrote:
| Quoting Cameron Patrick <cameron at patrick.wattle.id.au>:
| 
| > Distributions should be packaging their own software anyway
| 
| For the core, yes. Im talking more about 3rd party applications.

You're implying that there is a clear-cut distinction between core and
non-core ("3rd party") applications and that this distinction is in some
way meaningful in this debate.

| They differentiate themselves already based on target audience and fitness for 
| a particular purpose.

Exactly.  And as such, they make different packaging decisions based on
the appropriateness for a particular target audience or purpose.  

| Mandrake is more of a general desktop oriented distribution. RH are
| chasing the high end server market. Debian is for comp sci students
| with too much time. Slackware is for people who wear suspenders and
| have waaaay too much time.

Ahem.  Stop it with the stereotypes, please.  Irrelevent ad hominem
attacks are not appreciated.

| If they all use RPM, would it really matter? If they all had a similar if not 
| identical directory structure, would it really matter?

Possibly, although some alterations/improvements to RPM may be
necessary.  (Debian packages, for instance, are allowed to contain
interactive configuration scripts that run before the package is
unpacked.  RPM doesn't support scripts that run before a package is
unpacked, and mandates that its postinst scripts are non-interactive.
Whether or not debconf is a Good Thing is another matter entirely.)

| RH could continue tuning their distro for Oracle, Mandrake could
| continue packaging unstable X apps which give everyone the shits,
| Debian could continue with their marvellous tradition of testing
| everything for 14 years and having ultra-perfect dependency trees, and
| slackware could continue to be ignored by anyone except those people
| who really should be running one of the BSDs.
[...]
| 3rd party software (including open and proprietary) would have an easier time 
| packaging and distributing their software. General end users wouldnt have to 
| worry about which distro they were running.

Surely the above two paragraph are contradictory?  If distros are
different in some way then end users /will/ have to worry what
distribution they're using, and people distributing software in binary
form /will/ have to care about the differences between distributions.

| As soon as you start talking about deb vs rpm, you scare the poor
| dears.

("Dear-caught-in-headlights" reaction? :-P)

One could argue that Debian requires deb packages instead of rpm
packages for the same reason that Red Hat requires rpm packages instead
of self-installing exe files.  Sure, the differences between Debian and
Red Hat may be lesser in magnitude than those between Red Hat and
Windows, but the principle of different operating systems generally
requiring different versions of software packages remains sound.

(The counter-argument here, I suppose, would be that in general,
software for Windows XP runs on Windows 98 and vice versa.)

| Is RPM really that bad technically? It so, it does an awefully good impression 
| of 'working'. 

Finding something that works (or is "good enough") is easy.  But if
there are other things that work /better/ for a certain purpose, should
we not be working to popularise them rather than marginalise them as
"unpopular", and/or denigrate their users as "comp sci students with too
much time"?  (Me, I'm a maths student with too much time! :-P)

Cameron.


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