[Gllug] Installing Linux software (Part II)

[James.Rocks at equant.com]

Hi Jim (et al),

> I must confess to having less trouble with Debian with than I did
> with Red Hat and SuSE.  However I know more now so it is not a fair
> comparason.
> It would be good for the rpm distros to maybe get together and try
> and improve the situation or alternatively bow down to the one true
> distro and adapt apt-get as the package management system of choice.
> ;-P
> Yes David, I know it is fundamentally fscked but it isn't as
> fundamentally fscked as the rest. ;-)
> I still say tar is your friend and feel an un-natural desire to
> use Slackware and Rock Linux.

Okay ...

So can anyone tell me why it is that Linux installations are built this way
... I mean what is the advantage over a single package installation (which
some Linux packages appear to be)? Perhaps it is to confer a modular type
design on the OS (which in my opinion is inadequate since the packages seem
to often ask for specific versions of modules and, as I understand it,
modularity is more about keep I/F's the same whist where possible whilst
improving a given module.

I can see that the way that Windows installations sometimes blindly
overwrite DLL's etc. can cause problems (though apparently W2K monitors &
corrects for this, presumably XP does too) ... I can testify to that from
several years (fortunately a while ago) of HelpDesk experience.

I figure the complex & confusing nature of Linux installations (whilst
argubly historical) has remained that way for some reason more than "we
never got round to it" :-)

James


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