[SWLUG] Linux Distros and/or FreeBSD

[Justin Mitchell]

On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 13:02 +0100, Steve Anderson wrote:
> On 16/05/07, Keith Edmunds <kae at midnighthax.com> wrote:
> > 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!
> 
> Indeed. Remember that Ubuntu comes as a LiveCD that you install from -
> Red Hat 9 (the last non-Debian-related distro I used) came on three
> CDs. I imagine if you download the full Ubuntu DVD you'll get a lot
> more installed.
> 
> My box at home has Gnome and XFce installed and I can happily chop and
> change depending on what I'm doing.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Precisely the reason I left RH9 behind and moved to Debian instead of
> FC1. 


apt-rpm existed back in the rh8 and rh9 days, apt being just a frontend
anyway someone ported it to use rpm as its backend, the likes of
freshrpms.net had apt enabled repos.

yum was pretty slow when it first started, as they chose some
inefficient but flexible methods (eg the xml package details files) but
it has gradually increased in speed with each revision, as well as
having a large array of plugins (in the standard repository) that speed
it up in various ways and add extra functionality.