[SWLUG] Linux Distros and/or FreeBSD

[P.G. Richardson]

To be fair, rpm based distros have improved a lot and I have no problems
with Mandriva or Fedora in this respect.

Mandriva uses RPMDrake which should analyze all dependencies and install
them automatically. Just like apt, although apt is certainly a tad
quicker. Preference for the command line would mean a
    urpmi <packagename>

with similar results.

Fedora is a little slow in using yum but apparently that is getting a
rewrite so may well improve mightily.

Can you give an example of a BitTorrent client that failed to install
correctly?

I find rpm problems only surface when trying to install an rpm not built
for the distro it is being installed on.

Regards

PGR


> 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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