[Glastonbury] Installing packages

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 12:36:10AM +0100, nick irwin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> For a long time I have heard that Debian is the Distribution to use to make 
> installing packages easier.
Agreed :) 
> I am a dedicated Mandrake user, as it was the best way for me to switch from 
> my very crash prone Windows installation. But I have found a huge problem 
> with Mandrake and its "dependency" issues.
This is the problem with ALL rpm based distributions IMHO.
> After reading up on the apt-get feature of Debian, I realised that it seems to 
> work in much the same way as Mandrakes' 'grpmi'. The problem with grmpi, is 
> in my opinion, that there are not enough quality sources to download from.
It is always best to download from your distribution's master site where
possible. 
> Do people think that Debians system works better? If so is this simply because 
> they have better download sources?
Debian packages more than most other vendors (12000+ packages in the
"unstable" tree, 8000+ in "stable".  Debian doesn't have many download
sources by comparison.  One of the most important factors is that the
Debian developers co-operate to sort out dependency hell from the 
outset, follow detailed packaging guidelines and make Debian 
self-consistent while attempting to maintain binary compatibility with
the other distributions.
> I only ask because I am thinking of installing Debian alongside my existing 
> Windows and Mandrake installations, to evaluate the effectiveness of Debian 
> over Mandrake and see if I am really ready for the change.
> 
> I'd like to hear your thoughts on the dependency issues.
No worries - Debian is good at this - IMHO and as an admittedly
slightly biased Debian developer.

I could explain all of the above and detail my experience with
Debian over six or seven years if this was appropriate: it may
be better to mail me off list as I can get fairly verbose.

Andy