On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, MJ Ray wrote:
On Mon, Aug 30, 1999 at 10:59:29PM +0100, James Green wrote:
Cool. Y'know, I've been waiting for the new Debian (2.2?) to come out before switching from RH6, but since this seems still miles off, I just
2.1r3 will hopefully be out soon. I wonder if it will appear in time for CDs for ALUG 3? Or maybe Slackware 5, but that's hopeful.
I thought Slack 5 had just entered devel? Not even mozilla-like yet ;-)
Debian 2.2 is looking to be still three months away.
My only problem with Debian is that the .deb packages seem a great deal less in distribution/access than .rpms. Go to a software website, you can more likely download .tar.gz and .rpms, but never .debs.
That's because there are more debs in the distribution tree, which has the advantage of being audited more carefully, inside their extensive bugtracking system and probably available from a site close to you.
RPMs are fickedly wucked, as nearly all dependencies are broken on contributed packages.
BUT, how easy is it to make .debs? I grab a tarball or patch a tarball; I want to create a package to install; with rpm I have a reasonable change of having a .spec file to to the job with, what about Debian's system?
Of course, the alternative is to wait for Debian to come out with a .deb, but how long does this take? I know that RPMs for GNOME only started coming out hours after each new release following a long thread "encouraging" someone to get their arse into gear and package them up - even now they're only available as unofficial rpms, RHAD eventually decide to release them in batch; this is not good.
I must admit, the only thing holding me back from Debian is the uncertainty over building .debs myself and availability of official ones.
together and build a GNU package manager for all distros. It's the one area where Linux is totally beaten be Windows :(
!!! Windows currently has *no* package management, hence the proliferation of InstallShield and similar tools.
Well at least Windows has the one dominent system that practically *everyone* conforms to, Linux/Unix has RPM and deb and probably a couple of others; yes, rpm is domiment, but is hasn't compeletely penetrated the market, which I why I say a standard-across-distros GNU Packager is needed.
Still, I just created my first rpm - gtk+-1.2.4.