[svlug] RH dependencies, not using up2date

[Karsten M. Self]

on Sun, Jul 28, 2002, Walter Reed (wreed at hubinternet.com) wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 28, 2002 at 07:32:00AM -0700, Michael Olds wrote:
> <RH install problems and other issues snipped> 
> > I'm looking into Linux from Scratch.
> 
> If you are a Linux newbie, installing all your apps from tarballs will
> probabaly end up being a very frustrating experience. Many of the
> packages require a significant amount of work to customize them for a
> particular set of features, libraries, etc. Solving dependency issues
> can be almost as difficult as dealing with them with rpm.

Agreed.  Though some library issues may be resolved, Gentoo's been
piquing my interest.

> Distros such as sorcerer and gentoo assume that you are a competent
> UNIX admin / programmer. 

...capable of runing ./configure; make; make install, at any rate.
Resolving what breaks when all goes not well....

> Frankly, Debian really shines here. You have dozens (hundreds?) of
> people (package maintainers) handling the dependency issues / package
> configuration tweaks for you. 

Based on grepping package lists, 1,022 package maintainers.  Sid
recently passed 10,000 packages.

> They also frequently add patches for security / stability problems (RH
> does this too.) When you install Debian/Stable, you can be really sure
> that it is indeed "stable".  Patches are released as needed for
> security / stability issues. Bug fixes are frequently backported to
> older releases of software to maintain consistent behavior (you don't
> want functionality changed out from under you.) Packages are NOT
> updated just to have the latest / greatest code.

Clarifying:

   - security updates on stable are just that.
   - package updates on the testing/unstable tracks *are* likely to be
     feature updates, and may well break things.  In general, I find
     either track to be more stable than an RH distro being upgraded on
     a similar schedule.

> Many of the people on svlug are long-time UNIX guru's. There is a
> reason so many of them support Debian.

Yep.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   Übersoft:  Our Lawyers are Better.
     http://www.ubersoft.net/
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