http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resou...rce=article-rpm

Interestingly, I've been thinking of installing Gentoo, something the author suggests instead of RPM-based installations. I've not been able to build my own RPMs with checkinstall since upgrading to 10.0CE, but it's more a reason of customisation that I'm thinking of switching.

RPM? nope, not for a long time, IMO.

Gentoo? Nice distro. I'f you like compiling, it's the way to go, IMO.

I like gentoo & slackware, i've kind of got tired of rpms myself.

Although I've been a linux user for some 3 years or so, and still have problems installing programs, I too thought like you. Why base a distro on RPM and not Debian? But the facts don't bear out my opinions. RPMs are here to stay. Yum, Apt-Get and Up2date make installing RPMs easier. They don't take care of all the problems associated with RPMs but they do smooth the road quite a bit. Since installing and usiing Fedora, my expereance in that area has helped in understanding what RPMs are all about. Not that I completely understand it. With my Fedora Core 1, I use apt-get, Yum and Up2date to look for and install programs. Mandrake's UPPMI is a like program that makes working with Linux less of a headache. Linux has a long way to go to match the ease of installing a Windows based program. But things are looking up as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, like I said, my issues are more on a level of customisation. That article also said that Gentoo is one of the best ways to learn hands-on what's going on with one's Linux system. That's more what I'm after.

But yes, RPMs have their faults... as does everything.

If by custimization you mean as I've heard others say, you can install a pkg without installing all the normal pkg dependencies that come with prebuilt rpm binaries, then forget that aspect. It's not that you can't do that, you can do that with any source pkg, it's just that it's not an option often enough to justify switching distros, alone. It simply eliminates a handful of, yes big groups of dependencies, but the hd space isn't an issue. The only thing you gain with that option with a source distro is the time you save by not having to wait for those other pkgs to build. So IMO, it simply boils down to whether or not you want a source distro for the optimization factor, which has been proven to be a hardware specific issue that doesn't hold true for all. For those it does give an ever so slight increase, half of that is imagined. JMO

RPMs are a royal pain. Yast drove me nuts trying to install Mplayer. Urpmi helps a lot, but if you have ever used Debian you find that the whole installation and upgrade process is much smoother. It would be wonderful if other distors had the equivalent of stable, testing, and unstable that Debian has. One problem, I assume, is that this makes no sense for a commercial product. How would Suse or Mandrake make money if all you had to do is a dist-upgrade?

devel
official

Yeah, like I said,

RPM's are not going anywhere. Anything that makes Linux easier to use will stay. Plus they have been saying that rpm is dead for at least 2 years now.

RPM has gotten better over the years, I do need to run a rh box from time to time.

The real question for me has always been what's so great about .DEB files?

In the end it is really just a binary tarball with some metadata included with it. If you run a DEB distro without APT its just as bad as an RPM distro without Yum, APT, YOU, URPMI or RedCarpet.

And given that APT and YUM and URPMI are now bundled with most RPM distros with their ability to resolve dependencies: the question remains - whats so great about DEB files?




mousematt is :mdk: powered. r u?

well just tell it like it is next time, why don't ya