Reinstalling as an opportunity

[Robert Heller]

At Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:07:26 +0700 Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net> wrote:

> 
> Donald Allen wrote:
> > ...take this as an
> > opportunity to use a Linux distribution with top-notch package management,
> > such as Debian, Ubuntu, or Gentoo. Some may disagree, but I don't think
> > Redhat and Fedora Core <whatever> are in that category (remember -- good
> > package management not only involves good package management software, but a
> > rich respository that isn't rife with dependency bugs).
> Any comment about SuSE?

SuSE is another RedHat 'spinoff' -- it too uses RPM, just like RedHat,
FC*, Mandrake, etc. Just as good/bad as RedHat.  I would guess Donald
Allen would feel the same way. There really isn't any more (or less)
problems with RPM based distros than with what Debian, et. al. Yes,
using RPM *bare* tends cause one to have way too much fun with
'dependency hell', but yum and the like take care of this, at least for
the less experienced users.  I expect that Donald Allen has had some
bad experiences with RPM in the past (and yes, before yum, 'dependency
hell' was a major issue with RPM-based distros).  One difference: RPM
is not really *source* based, unlike the Debian package management,
which seems to more likey fetch source code and compile as needed --
RPM-based distros don't fetch SRPMs and rebuild them.  I am not sure if
it is an advantage to anyone outside of developer types to 'install
from source' -- many *end users* don't want to have to have -devel
packages, source code, and tool chains cluttering up their systems.

*Most* of the dependency bugs seen with RPM based repositories show up
when people do *binary* installs from different distros or try to build
bleeding edge packages on older distros.  Otherwise 'dependency hell'
mostly happens with manually downloading binary packages and using RPM
'bare'.  Yum adds a layer of smarts WRT dealing with dependencies,
mostly by using RPM's --test option and re-searching the repository for
missing packages.  Also, since RPM is a binary package mangement,
dependency hell becomes more of an issue -- many 'dependency hell'
issues can often be dealt with by rebuilding the package from sources,
so long as compatible -devel packages are installed (including possibly
*older* -devel packages then those used when the binary package was
built).

I had no problems downloading the RHEL4 RPM for GnuCash 2.0.1.  I did
have to download the other RPM files that it depended on -- I knew to do
'rpm -hUv --test' on the (growing) batch of files until it stopped
complaining and then was able to cleanly install things at that point.

> 
> Norbert Klein
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Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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