[Gllug] Installing Linux software (Part II)

[tet at accucard.com]

>Moral of the story: use Debian.  apt-get works out all the
>dependencies for you, grabs them and installs the lot in the right
>order for you.  Sure it might not have a drag-and-drool interface but
>it sure does solve the RPM dependency problem.

Sorry, but this is just plain wrong. The only reason apt works at all
is because there's only one Debian, and Debian has a pretty exhaustive
package list. You don't have multiple vendors creating packages in
dpkg format, each with subtly different names, as you do in the RPM
world (yes, I know there are a few others like Corel, Storm, Progeny
etc., but they have such a minute market share that for the purposes
of this discussion, they might as well not exist). Don't forget that
apt now works with RPM too. And there are other front ends to RPM that
do similar dependency resolution (Ximian's Red Carpet, for example).

It just reinforces my opinion that packages should not be created by
third parties. They just cause more problems than they solve. If all
your packages come from a single vendor (e.g., Red Hat, Mandrake,
Debian, etc.) then you're fine. Otherwise, you're just asking for
trouble. The excpetion to this would be if they installed into their
own directoy in /opt, and had no dependencies other than on packages
supplied by the same vendor. See CorelDRAW 9 for an example of how
not to do it...

Tet

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