[Klug-general] Should RPM go away and Die a slow and painful death?

[Karl Lattimer]

On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 23:45 +0000, George Prowse wrote:
> I hope you dont mind, after Solaris'ing a test box i'm going to discuss
> the main points and change the subject line.
> 
> Karl Lattimer wrote:
> 
> > Agreed but its f*ck all to do with rpm, and hey its better than (un)
> > united linux which i believe has crumbled after some in fighting. 
> > Remember that LSB is a simple set of standards so systems can be 
> > inter-compatible for things like initscripts and such like, not a 
> > cartel of linux distributers who are angry at the linux share that 
> > redhat has and wants a piece of the pie.
> 
> LSB is rubbish because you break it if you dont use rpm! How useless is
> that!

Actually, LSB is a set of requirements (dependencies) which should be
available on all Linux systems. You don't break it if you don't use rpm,
its just dependencies of a linux system, things that CAN be relied upon.

For instance bash, bc etc...
> 
> >
> > The simple fact here is that deb vs rpm is a moot point, rpm has got 
> > better market penetration and is more widely adopted. The deb 
> > community in general is slipping away, they have managed to make a 
> > release this year so did apple, redhat, fedora and sun? Microsoft is 
> > still nowhere to be seen and missing most of the tech they promised 
> > instead touting the usual bullshit about security, stability and 
> > reliability i think its their mantra now.
> 
> hmmm, I see similarities in the IBM and Apple early PC days here...
> 
> >
> > The simple fact is, RPM has made it incredibly easy to run servers 
> > throughout the world, suse/novell and redhat/ibm and many others have 
> > benefitted from it, whereas deb has produced an almost impossible to 
> > sell distro because of their attitude toward non gpl software, this 
> > makes it harder to support from a hardware vendors perspective, they 
> > trail behind on patches and updates because they even struggle to 
> > release a distro. Deb is completely out dated and is difficult to 
> > maintain, and build new distributions out of.
> 
> Undoubtedly RPM has helped out anyone wanting to install things on linux
> and especially on anything production but the fact that remains is that
> the flaws that were mentioned earlier have only started being addressed
> in things like fedora where as apt saw the failures of rpm and addressed
> it. I'm not saying apt is great, just its a superior product, apt
> suffers from terrible logging that rpm doesn't though. But as you said
> earlier, it took Red hat 4 MAJOR releases to fix some of the problems.

RPM isn't maintained by redhat, its maintained by the RPM package
manager community.

> 
> >
> > RPM/Anaconda has been a vital tool, in places where there has been a 
> > mass install of redhat/fedora (a number of US universities and other 
> > institutions) they have found it easy to custom build their install 
> > CD's update their install CD's, build kickstarts for unattended 
> > installs with custom install cd's, maintain a package repository to 
> > speed up yum transactions and maintain versioning throughout an 
> > organisation.  These are all very important achievements of RPM/
> > anaconda, deb has been left by the wayside as a result of the way 
> > their community is run.
> 
> I totally agree with you here, Anaconda is a superb tool.
> 
> >
> > So from my point of view, as a linux user, systems administrator, 
> > programmer and general geek, rpm serves my needs, has better support 
> > is more widely available and pretty easy to use, and I get to use 
> > gnome 2.10 without much work i.e. putting a CD in and pressing the 
> > big upgrade button. A few days pass and the bleeding edge distro is 
> > even more bleeding edge and about a week from now I'll have gstreamer 
> > with DVD menu's in totem, how long will it take deb to get that? 
> > WITHOUT BUILDING IT FROM SOURCE!
> 
> I serves your needs barely, which for me isn't good enough.
> It doesn't have better support, all that is needed for either is
> documentation.
> More widely avaliable? I can imagine the database is the same size. Or
> do you mean external packages?
> Bleeding edge? I thought you wanted stable? You are using it from a
> production point remember...

"bleeding edge distro" i.e. packaged, tested and production software
that is in the high order versioning, gnome 2.10 for instance, thats
pretty bleeding edge!
> 
> >
> > Not everyone wants to build a package from source when it doesn't 
> > work, or its not available, for me that is a last resort. rpm/yum and 
> > anaconda serve the needs of many. Me included I don't find the 
> > problems you mention, as inhibiting factors. I find apart from the 
> > odd nuisance of it rpm serves my needs and keeps things ship shape.
> >
> > k, 
> 
> I like not having the inhibiting factors or nuisances ;)

Yeah but sometimes its easier to wipe your own arse than build a robot
to do it for you.
> 
> G
> 
> 		
> ___________________________________________________________ 
> How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday 
> snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Kent mailing list
> Kent at mailman.lug.org.uk
> http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/kent
>