[Wylug-help] Networking Linux PCs

[David Pashley]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Monday 02 December 2002 7:03 pm, Frank Shute wrote:
s.
> > >
> > > RH beta testers + RH users < linux users
> >
> > But normal kernel users < linux users.  I don't get your point.
>
> Try this:
>
> FreeBSD kernel users = FreeBSD users
>
Not quite true considering Debian/BSD.



>
> > > But with FreeBSD there are 7000+ ports, the vast majority of these are
> > > actively maintained and they are known to play nicely with your
> > > current release and the port maintainers have provided patches and
> > > Makefiles so you just have to do `make install' and you can keep your
> > > ports tree current via cvsup and upgrade them with portupgrade. But
> > > how do I do that with some rpm or tarball that I've just grabbed off
> > > the 'net from somewhere? You can't.
> >
> > Agreed.  But if you take something from outside of the ports then you're
> > in the same state.
>
> In my experience you rarely have to take anything from outside of
> ports. I've got a couple of trivial Blackbox apps that I've compiled
> by hand. But with RH you're always taking rpms or source from outside
> the core distributed system.
>
> > You can't just argue scale as being why RPM sucks.  If RPMS
> > covered all 7000+ ports, what would your argument against it be?  It's
> > not that hard.
>
> If it's not that hard and it's beneficial to do it, then why don't
> RedHat do it? Gentoo have managed to pull their heads out of their
> butts and do it.
>
/me notes debian has over 10,000 packages.

david root% grep-available -s Package . | sort -u | wc -l
  10265

> > > > > It's easy for me to keep my FreeBSD boxes up to date with the
> > > > > latest kernel and userland - not that I do, I just fix
> > > > > vulnerabilities - I just have to run a cron job in the early hours
> > > > > if I want to.
> > > >
> > > > As it is with RedHat.
> > >
> > > I think not. No cvsup or buildworld equivalent and portupgrade makes
> > > rpm look lame - which it is of course. Then of course there's those
> > > pesky rpms/tarballs that you've just grabbed off the 'net.
> >
> > Ahhh but you're not arguing against RPM now.  You're arguing about one of
> > the command line tools you've used.  apt-get for RPM, urpmi, up2date?
>
apt-get for rpm is worthless if you don't have the quality behind the packages
you are fetching.

> I'm arguing about the way a RedHat system is maintained as a *whole*.
> There are no comparable tools with a RedHat system and there is no
> distributed cvs system with which to use them.
>
> > > There is no proper system in place to keep your system current. cvsup,
> > > buildworld and ports allow me to keep my system synchronised with how
> > > RELEASE currently stands ATM.
> >
> > up2date.  apt-get RPM, urpmi (Mandrake).
>
Again, you can download new packages, but do they work. How many packages can
you download using those tools and how many of them are created by the
distro, cos once you find a package that isn't in the archive, you are back
where you started

> See above.
>
> > > Build a new kernel, base and userland automatically applying patches
> > > along the way with RH & rpm unattended? I don't think so. Jump
> > > from RH6.2 to RH8.0 without a major headache? No.
> >

I believe debian can upgrade from pre-libc5 to sid with no (very few)
problems.

> > Fair enough.
> >
> > > See above. As it stands, XP is easier to maintain than RH but that
> > > doesn't seem to alarm RedHat users....which itself is a cause for
> > > alarm.
> >
> > Hahaha.  Sorry, I thought you were a troll before, but now I know you
> > are.
>
> I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you're wasting your time
> shooting the messenger. 5 yrs ago RH was better than NT4 by a mile but
> it's made no noticeable progress whereas the MS systems have. A
> desktop XP system is trivial to maintain for a newbie or otherwise as
> compared to a RH system.
>
Although XP has other issues.

> > > RedHat's business is currently based on a flawed OS that needs to be
> > > fixed pretty rapidly if they are to remain in business. Increasingly
> > > whizzy installation graphics is fiddling whilst Rome burns.
> >
> > I see no evidence of FreeBSD taking the world by storm.
>
> Does that concern you? Does it concern me? No.
>
> FYI though, with FreeBSD code being in OSX and the MS offerings you
> can argue that FreeBSD has got a greater user base than not just
> RedHat but Linux itself.
>
I assume you are talking about IP stack among others. IIRC the IP stack in
NT/w2k/XP is not derived from BSD. There may be BSD code in some of the unix
systems for Windows.

As for OS X, I'm not sure that there is that much left that is recongisable as
BSD. There is also quite a bit of GNU in OS X.

> Does it concern you that you've chosen to bury your head in the sand
> and take it as an article of faith that RedHat is a great system and
> is not flawed, and that any suggestion otherwise is slander?
>
> It should do.
>
> --

- --
David Pashley
david@davidpashley.com
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE967kCYsCKa6wDNXYRAtzvAJ9ovt9MWGLziggJcDAwhzIG5HCySACfULzj
BuZBWiUfm4DWzj4RcTsKtrg=
=oGMj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----