On 23/09/14 16:03, Mark Rogers wrote:
It's been many years since I last used a .rpm based distribution in anger, but the experience lead me to dislike them compared with .deb based distros. In particular I had a number of occasions where an installation issue lead me to a system that I could not fix, where that has never happened to me yet in all my years with .deb-based systems (Debian and Ubuntu). Sure I've had conflicts and problems, but I've always been able to get pas them.
Am I right to trust .deb more than .rpm? Should I give (eg) Fedora another chance?
Incidentally I also found package management faster with .deb (eg apt-get update vs yum update, apt-get install vs yum install). Stable beats speed but .deb seemed to give me both.
I got badly burnt on a live SuSE system some years ago, and have never been near an RPM-based system since. They are ok as long as you don't deviate from the norm. In my experience, they are vulnerable to catastrophic library and dependency problems if you deviate from the "approved" packages, and especially is you compile something from scratch.
I started using Gentoo some 14 years ago, and have never looked back. I've been using Ubuntu and derivatives as well for a year or two, and haven't had any of the same problems.
Sadly, most contract assignments specify RH/Fedora or CentOS, and I not only have little experience (FreePBX is the limit) but no inclination to work with them again.
FWIW.
Cheers, Laurie.