[SWLUG] Linux Distros and/or FreeBSD

[Keith Edmunds]

On Wed, 16 May 2007 12:42:04 +0100
"Davage, Marcus" <Marcus.Davage at lloydstsb.co.uk> wrote:

> I tried Ubuntu from a mag's DVD - it was OK, but it didn't come with
> much, and you can't choose which DM you want.

You can if you have more than one installed!

> What I don't like about Mandriva/Linux is the whole dependency thing,
> e.g. I want to install, oh, I dunno, say a bittorrent client, Mandriva
> Update says I need to install half a dozen lib... dependencies before
> eventually failing for some reason or other.
> 
> Is there a distro out there where I can just download an application (or
> a new release of an application) and not worry about libs and sources and
> stuff, or is that part of the whole Linux thing?

A lot of people dislike RPM based distros for the reasons you outline.
Without wanting to get into a flame war, many people consider Debian's apt
package management to be superior in this respect. With a Debian system
(or a derivative, such as Ubuntu), you can type:

	aptitude install pacakgename

and it will automatically manage all dependencies for you. If you download
tarballs and build packages yourself, you're going to need to manage the
libraries yourself (with any distro), but - in my experience at least -
Debian has got this right.

Hope that helps, ask if you have any questions.

Keith

-- 
Keith Edmunds

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