[SWLUG] Problems

[Chris M. Jackson]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Mark Fisher wrote:

> Im a Gentoo-er and your point here, about up-to-date software is one of the 
> main reasons why I run Gentoo onboth my server and workstation.  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.

I typically found it slower, after taking some factors into account.  The 
major vendors' RPM databases typically offered "recent stable releases", 
while the master Debian apt repositories categorised software as "stable", 
"testing" or "unstable".  The way I understand it (which may be 
entirely incorrect), the hefty delays in getting things into "stable" 
saw people moving to "unstable", so there is now "experimental".  So, 
while the packages were available at the same sort of time, they were 
marked as "unstable", so I suppose it's more accurate to say that it takes 
forever for software to make it into the Debian stable releases.

> - From an open source advocate point of view, I think this is therefore failing 
> one of the great pluses for open source over closed source - its ability to 
> patch up holes quickly and get the updates into the field.
> 
> If you have a packaging system which is a month or 2 behind, your on the same 
> slippery slope as Redmond, arent you?

I suppose that's true in some ways.  This reminds me of something someone 
told me recently:

        "I went to Windows Update for the first time in about a month,
    and was told there were no critical updates.  I thought 'WTF?  Do
    I have a virus that's fooling WU into thinking there's no critical
    updates?'  Really."

> Nah no need to flame ;o)  I couldnt agree more, people always get the 'oh but 
> its optimised for my arch' arguement out of the cupboard for using Gentoo, 

Oh, I like the "it's optimised for my arch" line that comes from people 
that typically like to think of themselves as "l33t h4x0rz".  Almost as 
if people think that their 2GHz P4 is actually different in someway from 
all the other 2GHz P4s in the world :) 

> LFS is somthing that I have wanted to do for some time now and yes, the 
> install process for Gentoo looks almost as frightening as the LFS one :P  

At least in LFS, you get to learn something while you do it, e.g. some of 
the intricacies of configure scripts, the benefits of "strip", the 
importance of getting a cup of tea while compiling such things as gcc 8)
This, instead of sitting around for 2-3 days while all the sources are 
downloaded, unpacked and compiled.

The joys of *real* binary distributions.  That said, the inquisitive part 
of me is tempted to at least investigate Gentoo at some point.

Yours tempted to attend the LUG meet tomorrow night, 

-- 
|/  Chris M. Jackson
C>  Be seeing you!
H