I hate Fedora (working title) - Page 2

It's not that FreeBSD is just using sources with no package management.

If you have local modifications to some packages FreeBSD's ports system is an order of magnitude easier than the rpms stuff.

A couple quick comments:

1) I don't understand why a bunch of Linux users can somehow be intimidated by using apt OR yum in Fedora. It takes 2 seconds to set up, there are numerous well-written tutorials, complete with repositories, etc. Unless you hate RPMS (which, point taken, are still often quite handy and nice), how much easier can it get?

I've been running yum on 4? flavors of Fedora for a while now without any problems. Sure, if you decide to start mixing repositories you can get into trouble, but the great RPM benefit is that it's usually easy to clean up. Just be sure about your repositories and you're fine.

2) CentOS is based specifically on the RedHat Enterprise server. It essentially removes the artwork and other trademarked material. My company uses it (RHEL) on real-time servers in >40 states. Although nothing is *perfect*, it's pretty damn good.

yumex.

Personally I do dislike RPMs and their precompiled management system. But I use portage

There are more repositories out there for APT than YUM.

Very BAD memories of RPMs in general, including conflicts that didnt actually exist and various other problems(Overwriting libs that shouldnt have been etc..)

Seablade

I am not aware of a single repository-of-note that doesn't offer both (not that it matters, as the distinction between yum and apt is nil to mild in all but exceptional cases). How many repositories does one actually need?

Which leads to this:

...which is the noted aftereffect of using multiple repositories that conflict with one another.

Stick with the big guns (dag, dries, fresh, redhat) and avoid the fights (newrpms). I've been pain free since, I dunno', RH 8.1?

What, really, makes that distro-specific? Is it the 2.4 kernel option that comes with FC4 or something?

FWIW, the only time I've ever seen anything like that (having installed it on 100s of machines) is when there's something f'd up on the hardware side. I would try to figure out, if you care, what it is that Fedora is doing differently.

Meanwhile, I'm no Fedora apologist and am well aware of the problems with rpms. I am just surprised to see such a simple, straightforward issue confound so many people who have no problem getting their hands dirtier than is required to maintain safe RPM usage!

Uh Chipart the RPM problems I refer to have to do with manual install of RPMs. Never have that problem with apt or portage, and the rpms should not have overwritten things that they did.

Not to mention that one of the great things about debian/apt or gentoo/portage(Mainly debian) is that you dont HAVE to install it, it is already there and integrated into the system. Not only that but that is the expected way for most people to upgrade so it is not an option, it is the standard.

It is great you like Yum(Which I havent tried) and apt for rpm. I think they are both good concepts, it is the RPM though that I dont like, and there are many others that dont either.

Seablade

And APT I was referring to was for debian, not RPM.

Seablade

I'm curious: to what package are you referring? WHEN was this? Obviously, you have to trust the person who packaged the rpm. Some non-mainstream source could nuke you.

Again, I'm not trying to sell rpm's to anyone. The flaws with the system are well known. But they are much easier to avoid now than they were even, say, a year ago.

This, then, becomes a distro philosophy issue, not an RPM one. For example, many of us know how RH stopped shipping all kinds of media libraries (think: mp3) because of patent concerns. It's great that those are still in, say, Debian, but companies who purchase Linux need some assurance that they're not going to wake up to $Xm lawsuit. See the SCO issues from last year, as well.

Which makes Linux all the more cool. You can choose the distro that suits your needs...if you're running for yourself, on a desktop, you can do verrrrry different things than if you have to support 1000s of commercial clients around the country.

Yes it was more than a year ago and I dont remember now who the distributors were or what package. Chances are several of the problems were with packages distributed by either the software maker or others and problems in the distribution's non-standard filesystem. It gets rather messy when trying to track down exactly what went wrong in an RPM install IMO.

It may be better now, however the format as you have already mentioned has some well known shortcomings, and that is the reason I stay away from it now, and it will probably be a GOOD LONG while before I go back to it, as I dont see anything happening to Gentoo anytime soon, and probably not Ubuntu either and those are my first two choices.

I still end up using RPMs on very rare occasions when I cant get the source compiled for whatever reason, but when I do that I am VERY careful about what it does on installation and thankfully restoring libraries is much easier on Gentoo for me. COurse the ideal would be just to distribute RPMs as statically linked binaries, that would go in their own folders under /opt or /usr/local (I prefer /opt for that and is typically where i install rpms to nowadays so they dont screw things up very easy) however unfortunatly I dont see that one happening all to quick.

I dont see rpm becoming rapidly better very fast either.

Although I dont udnerstand you commenting about legal issues when dealing with RPM, maybe I missed something but that is one area that has had NO legal issues.

In as far as choosing a distro to support my needs, yep I do. That is why I choose APT/Ubuntu in some cases or Portage/Gentoo in others. I much prefer Portage myself extraordinarily more flexible than I found either of the others to be really.

Seablade

I was referring to your comment about how all the pieces you need for the distro are already included in the distro itself (i.e., you don't need to download anything to get packaging going in Gentoo). RH, for some good reasons, opts not to include everything.

FWIW, you can use the RH built-in update features as well, it's just that yum/yumex/etc. are cooler :-)

Chiphart, we're comparing apples to oranges here. With Debian and Gentoo, if you don't have the package manager, you'll never have the system itself

I realize that. But look at the bigger picture and include any of the CD-based distros. You can't (practically) upgrade those without replacing them, so none of the upgrade tools are included there. With RH, you can use the built in upgrade tools from RH and even point at different repositories (it's designed to do that). They opted, philosophically, to not include yum+apt for that reason, I presume.

Thus, you have some distros that "encourage" updating (gentoo, say), some that wish to control it (RH, especially the enterprise versions), and some for whom upgrading without replacing isn't an option (knoppix-on-cd). The right tool for the right job. Given RH's commercial bent, having *limited* upgrade capabilities - but, for example, being able to create a private repository for 100s of machines - is just what they need.

So...when I said that RH's lack of apt and yum pre-installed were a matter of philosophical intent and not a flaw of the RPM methodology, that's what I meant.

Does that make more sense?

We can all agree that RPMs >> .dlls, right? http://www.notebookforums.com/images...es/thumbup.gif

Personally Chipart, my experience with built in upgrades for distros like RedHat(I have not tried Fedora's so I am referring to the original RedHat distros here) or Suse and the like has been less than good. In fact pretty weak in all honesty, it was either reinstall or dont upgrade, there was no inbetween, and lord help you if your internet died in the middle of an upgrade.

Now Fedora may have changed this though, I dont know.

Seablade

Chiphart, I'd say that I agree with what you've said. The reason WHY non-enterprise distros opt for the reinstall-or-don't-upgrade policy is a different matter alltogether.

Well, cripes, Fedora has been out for, what, 4? years now? There's a biiiiiiig difference between RH 6.0 and Fedora.

As I've said in other links, I've tried a number of distros on a handful of machines and they all - well, most - certainly have their pros and cons. At the 4 desks of people in my office, we have OSX (different discussion), Gentoo, some Debian thing, XP (gads), and my Fedora. And, when it comes to my Sagers, Fedora has been, BY FAR, the best of the bunch. I tried loading Ubuntu on while looking for a solution to my sound card woes and it locked up every time. Fedora: never.

I realize that YMMV, but Fedora DID pass the ultimate test: it's running here at home. My wife uses it now - and, except for itunes (which isn't a disto thing AND can be done), she doesn't miss XP one bit :-)

Install Notes

FWIW, if you want a good Fedora install checklist,
this guy did a good one. It includes two nice links to the RPM repository issue. I've followed ~90% of what's in here and the instructions are both helpful and simple.

Rock on.