[Klug-general] Ubuntu and Kabuntu

Tue Jun 21 17:26:32 BST 2005

One, two, three, four I declare a flame war.

Deb, Rpms, Yast, Exe, Sit; hell they're all cool so long as they work, work
well and are easy. All you hard core coders can go muck around with any
system you can dream off but me and 95% of the rest of the population just
want to double click, install and get on with it- all the rest of the behind
the scenes stuff just really doesn't matter to us.

And anyway for my money urpmi works just great - once you've sorted the
configuration out.
Also autopackage is a really nice little project - slower then a sheep with
no legs in an egg and spoon race granted, but it works.
It's unlikely that this debate will ever be sorted however when you're using
systems that essentially have very different bases and ways of looking at
things.

-----Original Message-----
From: kent-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
[mailto:kent-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of George Prowse
Sent: 21 June 2005 17:31
To: Kent Linux User Group - General Topics
Subject: Re: [Klug-general] Ubuntu and Kabuntu

RPMs never get built correctly because they are so complicated.
The dependency managing/checking tools are bad (one type of dep... which
leads to multiple rpms needed)
What about if you install package a which has dep b but dep b needs dep
c? why do you not get told about dep c at dep a time?

Want me to go on?

RPM is just another example of good idea, bad execution.

Karl Lattimer wrote:

>rpm will never die! and why exactly do you think that deb is better? The
>only thing wrong with RPM is that you can check which packages are
>required by an installed package without doing a dry run erase.
>
>rpm has good requirement/dependency checking of binaries/packages/files
>on build/install, a good strong build method (which is VERY flexible), a
>good easy to use cli, can uninstall a package into an rpm file (although
>you can't make an rpm from an installed package without uninstailling
>it?!?!), rpm is also more widely used for a great many reasons and deb
>hardly ever gets an update.
>
>I think most important about rpm is anaconda, anaconda can determine the
>install order of rpms for splitting onto CD's and mangle this order up
>in a great many ways to get the most efficient use of the space on the
>disk. Anaconda also provides a massive amount of configuration for
>building a system remotely using rpm and even doing remote installs via
>vnc.
>
>although RPM and anaconda are not the same thing, they are inextricably
>linked and provide a means of developing customised distributions of
>linux very quickly, which, most importantly WORK on install.
>
>Oh yeah and don't forget that rpm is probably the best linux ids out
>there, beats the hell out of trip wire, because every package is signed
>on build, files are summed on install in md5/gpg as you verify packages
>the signatures pop out warnings for various reasons, if you want to find
>a rootkit try verifying binutils, and voila if there is a root kit,
>you'll get a fail on all of the db checks. then all you need do to
>remove the rootkit is find all immutable files chattr them back rpm
>--replacepkgs and your done.
>
>Maybe I'm biased, I've used redhat for so long in so many servers its
>just imho the easiest way to make the world work. RPM can be cumbersome
>but it is getting better, and now that fewer tw at s are making crap
>packages and fresh/dag/nrpms/atrpms/fedora.us and many others are making
>good quality rpms to provide the things lacking in the fedora distro
>(mostly for legal reasons) there really isn't any need for me personally
>to use anything else.
>
>If i want to play with gnome 2.11 then i can jhbuild it (similar to
>emerge without effecting the system)
>
>Also, I still prefer handing a newbe my copy of the horse book (Linux in
>a nutshell) and saying, "Its all in there", watch as their face contorts
>and their brain explodes at the mere thought of reading a book with more
>than 1000pages and no pictures!
>
>YaST is like giving them a wowypop. 
>
>On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 15:45 +0000, George Prowse wrote:
>  
>
>>People need to learn how to edit configs themselves but for gently
>>letting people into a distro there is no better than YaST.
>>
>>Ubuntu reminded me of 2 things: Why i moved from Debian to Gentoo and
>>that rpm needs to die, deb is better.
>>
>>
>>Karl Lattimer wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Ethical google "Do no evil" lol
>>>
>>>I'm not an ubuntu or kabuntu user or even a SuSE user. I just had to put
>>>my sixth peneth in about YaST.
>>>
>>>YaST should be sent to the black hole that consumed linux conf, and will
>>>consume webmin. Admittedly a great idea for early linux users, I used to
>>>advocate things like this, but one thing that I've noticed about all of
>>>them is that they only incorporate the configuration methods of the few
>>>developers of the tools.
>>>
>>>Linux conf would for instance, break a manual set up of vhosts in apache
>>>when you tried to configure any of the server defaults via the tool.
>>>Other items were things like network card driver configuration being
>>>changed when you open the app and close it without even doing anything.
>>>Linuxconf taught redhat a very valuable lesson. Generalised
>>>configuration tools restrict the users movement and can lead to
>>>breakages in a lot of the system configuration (just look at the windows
>>>registry), in some cases breakages which cannot be fixed by the tool and
>>>even on manual repair the tool continues to misbehave. After redhat's 90
>>>day free support calls went through the roof as a result of linuxconf
>>>(rh6.2) they ditched it in favour of small specialised fault tolerant
>>>front ends (system-config-*), this has now become the norm amongst gnome
>>>and fedora developers. The all in one linux configuration solution is a
>>>bad idea, yast will probably either get ditched by novell fairly soon or
>>>be replaced with something simpler/smaller/more specialised.
>>>
>>>In simple terms, to learn linux you learn yast, but learning yast
>>>defeats the point of learning linux, you get apathetic, so you're still
>>>on the phone/mailing lists etc... trying to get someone to help you fix
>>>a problem outside of the scope of yast, then when you fire up yast to
>>>change something simple it breaks the fixes you put in place.
>>>
>>>Isn't it much better to have a tool for a specific task too, I can't
>>>even count the number of times I've been searching through control panel
>>>for something I KNOW IS THERE but can't find it, EVEN THOUGH I SAW IT IN
>>>THE LAST VERSION OF WINDOWS... Spreading configuration about makes the
>>>user look for it, no matter how well designed the front end is. What
>>>happens if suse decide to move proxy configuration from a well known
>>>spot to somewhere inside the network settings instead of where it
>>>USUALLY is ...
>>>
>>>You get the point?
>>>Karl,
>>>
>>>On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 14:53 +0000, George Prowse wrote:
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Useable...  Oh, you mean GNOME is usable?
>>>>
>>>>Ethical... You mean they dont kill kittens if you dont use it?
>>>>
>>>>Pretty good... I've used better. SuSE 9.3, which has just been released
>>>>is better for the beginner in my opinion. YaST has grown so much in
>>>>stature that there is a thread on the Gentoo forums about whether it
>>>>could be ported to be used on a Gentoo system so newcomers to Gentoo are
>>>>able to configure their system easily.
>>>>
>>>>I very much doubt you're stupid, you're using linux for a start!
>>>>
>>>>George
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>aleX Layfield wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>It's useable... and ethically... pretty good...
>>>>>
>>>>>For kids? Maybe... but I'm not a kid... just stupid...
>>>>>
>>>>>----- Original Message ----- 
>>>>>From: "George Prowse" <cokehabit2003 at yahoo.co.uk>
>>>>>To: "Kent Linux User Group - General Topics" <kent at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>>>>>Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 9:07 AM
>>>>>Subject: Re: [Klug-general] Ubuntu and Kabuntu
>>>>>

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