[svlug] distro 4a new user

[Ian Kluft]

On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 04:31:00PM -0700, bruce coston wrote:
> the web page rick mentioned looks good but a little
> dated, also looking at distrowatch.com i would
> recommend the new mepis as a good knoppix derivitive
> despite the fact that new does imply more risk unless
> you wanna spend a little money and/or want an easy
> transition from windows where i recommend xandros but
> more people use rpm distributions despite "rpm hel".

Nowadays there are utilities such as "yum" to manage RPM dependencies
and system updates automatically.  (Yum can even perform an OS version
upgrade, though that's probably still recommended only for more advanced
users.  I can vouch that it works well.)  That was the missing layer that
used to bring up the most objections to RPMs, resulting in the references
to "RPM Hell" by some who found themselves trying to sort through package
dependency information manually.  You used to need some familiarity with
RPMs to manage them well.  Things have progressed and those days are gone.

RPMs can also be managed with "apt-rpm", a port of Debian's apt to
RPM-based systems.  However, there is some loss in translation and
duplication of effort since the two sets of dependency information
aren't 100% compatible.  But there is definitely a portion of the
Linux community who prefer apt's style and that choice is available
on RPM systems.

Yum originated with the Yellow Dog Linux for PowerPC systems.  It stands
for "YellowDog Updater Modified".  It uses RPM data as its native dependency
format so it's technically a better fit.  Nearly all RPM-based distributions
jumped on it immediately.  It runs on Fedora, Novell/SuSE, Mandrake,
YellowDog, etc.

RPM and yum have also been ported to Sun Solaris and are rapidly gaining
popularity there.  While Linux distributions were busy competing with each
other, others Unix vendors were left behind.

There are other RPM-management choices.  RedHat's up2date can be a client
for public Yum repositories in addition to RedHat's RHN servers.
Novell/Ximian's commercial Red Carpet (and the Open Source counterpart
Open Carpet) also manages your system's RPMs using their own server
software (intended for on-site enterprise use) or public apt-rpm and yum
repositories.

References:
   Yum             http://www.linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/
   Apt-RPM         http://freshrpms.net/apt/
   Open Carpet     http://open-carpet.org/