[SWLUG] Problems

[Justin Mitchell]

On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 21:38, Mark Fisher wrote:
> I have used 
> RedHat on and off a number of times and the inherant problems of RPM are well 
> documented from both an administration and latest version/security point of 
> view.  Its been a while since I looked at Debian but at the time the latest 
> stable version was woody IIRC and apt seemed to be as slow as rpm at keeping 
> in line with software updates.

'inherant problems of RPM' 
like what ?

Redhat have always been pretty quick in getting the errata RPMs out of
the door. but many people wrongly think that they arent being fixed
because redhat dont just jump to new versions at the drop of a hat, they
bugfix the older known stable versions instead.

As for the rpm command line tools being a pest to use for keeping up to
date, sure, thats why there are lots of frontends to the rpm system to
do that kind of thing for you, such as redhats own up2date system,
ximians red-carpet, as well as apt-get (see http://apt.freshrpms.net)
and the many others.

I see nothing wrong with the rpm system itself, people who moan about
all the dependancies being a hassle a) arent using the right tool that
will resolve it all for them, b) want to live in a world like windows
where you just slap in any old random library version and pray it doesnt
break anything.

I have had to take over and upgrade existing systems of all manner of
various ages and collections of packages, and ive always been grateful
when they are an rpm based because the system knows what files and
packages have been installed and when, what files have been changed, and
what dependancies all those packages have, it saves a heck of a lot of
time and effort.