Using Urpmi?

[TitanKing]

I am fairly new to Linux and have been trying to make it Desktop suitable for my development for over a year now. I came across allot of issues and tried allot of distro’s. I decided to stick with Mandriva and fought my way to a good level. I have a few simple questions which up to now I don’t really understand. I hope to find some answers and raise some opinions;

 

Question;

Why cant you just use a Suse RPM file on Mandriva ? Its Linux no? Is Linux not suppose to be cross compatible.

 

Opinions;

I believe the above question is the reason developers fear to developing not only for Windows but also support Linux, you need to create hundreds of packages for different distro’s. That’s just not productive. I also believe that is the main reason Windows still has all the hardware and software developers full support. Then to cover it all you get different desktops like Gnome and KDE which also needs unique software. In politics this is the fastest way to make a party loose, divide the opposition too weaken them. If anyone could just explain it to me for the love of Linux. Do I simply not understand ?

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

[ianw1974]

The rpms designed are normally hardware specific, they have i386 or i586 or i686 in the name based on the platform, just like you will get x64 ones as well for 64 bit systems.

 

Also, they rely on dependencies. Whilst some rpms may work, you might encounter problems. Then again you might not. If you find problems after installing an rpm designed for another platform, then this is probably the reason why.

 

The other way is to use the source, and then compile on your system. That way it's optimised for your system, rather than using a generic rpm based for a specific platform.

 

Remember, Windows is the same. The install won't work unless you have a specific version or higher. The thing is you could get away using rpms from another distro without issues, whereas with Windows, if you don't have the right version, it won't install anyhow.

[arctic]

SUSE and Mandriva have a completely different history and thus a different layout. While Mandriva is/was originally based on Red Hat, it has many things that are still similar to Red Hat / Fedora. SUSE on the other hand was derived from Slackware, thus has very different pathes and config files and it has some YAST integration built into many packages. Furthermore, SUSE is compiled against i486, while Mandy uses i586. These are the main reasons why they are incompatible. The package-type (rpm, deb, tgz) does not mean much in terms of compatibility.

I believe the above question is the reason developers fear to developing not only for Windows but also support Linux, you need to create hundreds of packages for different distro’s.

On the first view, this is the logical impression one might get, but it is not completely accurate. What developers need to provide is the source-tarballs, nothing else. No finished rpms, no debs, no ebuilds. From these tarballs, every distro can build its own packages (rpm, deb, tgz, ebuild,...) quite easily and almost fully automated on a mach buildserver.

[TitanKing]

Thanks guys, this helps allot and cleared up thing amazingly. I truly appreciate the kind help I am getting over here. Is there a guide in compiling own source code RPM's ?

[arctic]

This might be a nice first step http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/KB/Basi...alling+Software

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=4516

[tyme]

The same issues exist in Windows and Mac OSX, you just don't notice them as much because there aren't as many versions of those two OSes as there are distributions of Linux. The thing you have to remember is Linux is truly just the kernel (main core of the OS), everything on top of that is added by the distributor to build the specific distribution they provide. This creates a lot of little differences from one distro to the next, because they may not do everything exactly the same. There was a project that was trying to standardize the setup of Linux distributions but it seems to have died out. There is also autopackage, but so far no major distributions have given it much support, unfortunately. They also have a pretty extensive FAQ that basically answers your original question.

[guppetto]

Also, jsut as a side note. If you choose to install from the source, you can use checkinstall to autogenerate an RPM file for later use. Source RPM are great for building a system taylord to your needs as well

 

If you really want to get you hands around Linux you should go over everything on this website:

 

http://www.brunolinux.com/

 

This website has to be the most complete source of Linux information I have ever encountered. Also, most of it is taylored to Mandrake/Mandriva which is an added bonus.

[JonEberger]

distributions are great things. in fact, they're part of what makes linux so usable for diferent purposes. different distributions have different goals. there are some distros centered towards newbs. some towards scientists, etc. but along with these different groups and goals come different ideas of implementation as well as different (geared towards each distro) software implementations of those goals.

 

i know this has been stated like five times. just wanted to throw my 2 cents in.