[Gllug] Debian hopeless

[Ben Fitzgerald]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 10:24:03AM +0000, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 10:10:57AM +0000, Ben wrote:
> > Same here. I just don't trust packages on the net (and I don't mean paranoia
> > about "backdoors", just did they compile against the same library versions
> > I have?).
> 
> In years of using Linux I have very rarely seen library problems with
> packaged applications.  The Linux library linking system is quite simple
> and elegant and helps avoid most of the potential problems there.  If an
> elf binary can't find the library it needs, it'll complain to you
> whether it came from a package or from your own compilation.

I'm sure it will complain. I'm not talking about hidden problems that surface
when it's too late. I just mean I install a package from someone's web
site and it doesn't work, or hasn't been compiled with the switches I need.
By the time I've done that I might as well have got the source, compiled
it and made a package, then installed it. On slack that doens't take long
at all, as the packaging is very unsophisticated.

There are less packages around for slack as it's less popular, so this is 
a route I often find myself taking. That said, I will use packages if I
feel I can rely on the source - e.g from an offical slack mirror in the 
"extras" directory.

Cheers,

Ben
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