the linux distro paradox

[Barnaby W. Füi]

i was just thinking about this, there's mandrake, suse, and redhat, all tailored to new users, and all have the absolutely horrid RPM system.

then we have distros like debian and gentoo which make installing programs extremely easy. why hasnt someone modified debian to make an ultra easy distro? couldnt mandrake base itself on debian instead of redhat? you could have kudzu and everything.

it makes absolutely no sense.

mandrake, redhat, suse = easy to install, a PAIN to install programs on.

debian, gentoo, bsd's even = not easy for newbies to install, but really easy to install software on.

anyone else wanna chime in on the subject?

 

[Goosemaster]

i Hear ya....RPMs SUCK on SUSE


They try to make it easy, but man.....

 

[Chatterjee]

gentoo is *not* that difficult to install.. it just seems that way because if you printed out the installation process, it's like 14 pages long. It's just a bunch of rudimentary steps and you learn a lot in the process!

once you install it, everything is smooth sailings onward. and if you get stuck, there's always the ever growing user base at http://forums.gentoo.org

-S

 

[Buddha Bart]

whats wrong with RPM?

bart

 

[Derango]

<< whats wrong with RPM?

bart >>



dependency hell.

Package A depends on package B, C and D, B depends on E, F, and G.....C depends on E and H, D depends on H, I and J, D depends on J L and L, E depends on package A C and D...

By the time you finish finding out what dependancies you need to get, you could have installed it with debian or gentoo, configured it, and become fluent with how package A works.

 

[FoBoT]

um
libranet

 

[Derango]

<< um
libranet >>



Hey...its FoBoT...didn't know you hung out around here

 

[SUOrangeman]

Wasn't/isn't Progeny a more user-friendly version of Debian? I think 1.0 has been out for quite some time. Any updates ... other than via apt-get?

-SUO

 

[EmperorRob]

<< dependency hell.

Package A depends on package B, C and D, B depends on E, F, and G.....C depends on E and H, D depends on H, I and J, D depends on J L and L, E depends on package A C and D...

By the time you finish finding out what dependancies you need to get, you could have installed it with debian or gentoo, configured it, and become fluent with how package A works. >>

On the other hand you could try and compile it yourself and get an error and have to e-mail the developer or list to find out what dependency you are missing.

I use RPM whenever possible. It's not perfect but I'll take it over nothing.

 

[EmperorRob]

<< dependency hell.

Package A depends on package B, C and D, B depends on E, F, and G.....C depends on E and H, D depends on H, I and J, D depends on J L and L, E depends on package A C and D...

By the time you finish finding out what dependancies you need to get, you could have installed it with debian or gentoo, configured it, and become fluent with how package A works. >>

On the other hand you could try and compile it yourself and get an error and have to e-mail the developer or list to find out what dependency you are missing.

I use RPM whenever possible. It's not perfect but I'll take it over nothing.

 

[Nothinman]

RPMs aren't bad, it's the system around them that's bad. .debs are pretty much exactly the same as RPMs, install some Debian packages with dpkg directly and you'll be in the exact same boat as an RPM distro.

Corel, Storm and Progeny all tried making an easy to use Debian but none of them caught on. And Libranet uses apt with RPM.

 

[manly]

Although .deb > .rpm, that doesn't mean RPM is an insufficient packaging standard. You *can* build effective front ends to RPM. SuSE automatically resolves dependencies with yast; Mandrake resolves them w/ their Software Manager. I'm not sure if Red Hat has a similar system (besides up2date). GnoRPM is weak the last time I looked at it.

Sure, nothing is as simple as an apt-get one liner, but a powerful CLI interface is not for newbies either.

 

[Tiger]

urpmi takes care of all those nasty RPM dependency problems.

 

[Buddha Bart]

jeez, i'll take 'rpm-dependency hell' over "custom-compile-dependancy-hell" any day.

do you have any idea how much time and effort those little "your missing X" messages save you?

bart

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< jeez, i'll take 'rpm-dependency hell' over "custom-compile-dependancy-hell" any day.

do you have any idea how much time and effort those little "your missing X" messages save you?

bart >>


that has nothing to do with this thread. i was talking about new users, and i was not talking about compiling programs. what i'm talking about is newbie + rpm = bad. sure, i could deal with rpm if i wanted to, its just way too much trouble to be worth my time.

 

[wildwildwes]

I was wondering this myself. I don't understand why rpms are so widely used. I'll take apt-get (or even a tar.gz) over an rpm any time. Seems like it would be easy to add something like that to the other distributions.

 

[Electrode]

./configure && make && make install

the only package manager I need

 

[Doomer]

Yep, last time I dumped Linux it was because I could figure out how to get Star Office installed. I asked for help but all I got was a bunch of gobbly-goop. I figured Linux was for geeks who learned it as their native language while the rest of use struggled in vain. IF the Linux world ever discovers this thing called USABILITY Linux will surely fly but until then I'm sure Bill Gates is laughing his A$$ off all the way to the bank.

Sad, really.

 

[manly]

BBWF,

Newbies would use neither apt or rpm on the CLI. They want something like Winblows Update or Red Hat up2date or Ximian Red Carpet.

All I personally want is an FTP site where I can download pre-packaged RPMs, but unfortunately companies are leaning away from that avenue (primarily Mickeysoft).

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< Yep, last time I dumped Linux it was because I could figure out how to get Star Office installed. I asked for help but all I got was a bunch of gobbly-goop. I figured Linux was for geeks who learned it as their native language while the rest of use struggled in vain. IF the Linux world ever discovers this thing called USABILITY Linux will surely fly but until then I'm sure Bill Gates is laughing his A$$ off all the way to the bank.

Sad, really. >>


i guess. what people seem to miss is that linux is not supposed to be an alternative to windows. linux was made by and for, people who LIKE to fiddle around with the innards of an OS, and all that. Unix hackers i guess. it's not designed for bitter windows users, its designed for geeks who want to mess around with stuff. of course it has changed alot, and distros make things alot easier, especially mandrake/redhat/etc, but when you get right down to it, linux is still maintained by the same people, and is still not supposed to be a replacement for windows.

 

[CTho9305]

Linux is an OS linus wrote because he wanted unix on his 386

 

[wildwildwes]

There are an awful lot of people and organizations doing linux development. Many of them do want linux to be a desktop os and a windows alternative. That's what's interesting about linux. It's got so many paths going in different directions. There isn't a clearly defined purpose for it (other than to be an operating system i guess), and I think this is what makes it so flexible. No one person or organization is able to dictate what linux does. Certainly though, the people working on desktop linux are in a minority.

 

[Nothinman]

I was wondering this myself. I don't understand why rpms are so widely used. I'll take apt-get (or even a tar.gz) over an rpm any time. Seems like it would be easy to add something like that to the other distributions.

Again, apples and oranges. Compare dpkg to rpm if you want to compare apples to apples. apt, dselect, etc are all wrappers around dpkg and could (and have been) easily be fitted to use rpm instead of dpkg.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< I was wondering this myself. I don't understand why rpms are so widely used. I'll take apt-get (or even a tar.gz) over an rpm any time. Seems like it would be easy to add something like that to the other distributions.

Again, apples and oranges. Compare dpkg to rpm if you want to compare apples to apples. apt, dselect, etc are all wrappers around dpkg and could (and have been) easily be fitted to use rpm instead of dpkg. >>


my beef with the whole situation is that the only distro that seems to have this down is debian. gentoo too i guess, in a different way, but similar i suppose. i dont see why redhat doesnt have an rpm repository like debian has for .deb's, and why they dont use an apt-like system by default. redhat is the big commercial distro, well, i'm sure IT people would love this sort of thing. security patch? rpm-get update && rpm-get upgrade, or whatever it would be.

 

[Nothinman]

my beef with the whole situation is that the only distro that seems to have this down is debian. gentoo too i guess, in a different way, but similar i suppose.

You forgot Libranet who has the first (and only?) rpm apt system.

i dont see why redhat doesnt have an rpm repository like debian has for .deb's, and why they dont use an apt-like system by default.

Maybe they can't afford the bandwidth and servers required, all of Debian's infrastructure is donated.