*- On 28 Mar, Marek Habersack wrote about "Re: Where is "/etc/rc.d/rc.local" on Debian?" > On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, George Bonser wrote: > >> On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Marek Habersack wrote: >> >> > You don't have to. Just get the src rpm >> > >> > marek >> >> You are NEVER going to find a SRPM of HP FireHunter, or any other >> commercial software pre-packaged for Red Hat. > Well, such software won't make it into Debian then... I guess... >
Correct. Maybe in non-free if the company will let Debian redistribute it but that is pretty rare. But if it is only available in .rpm format and designed to work on a Red Hat system and has the Red Hat init structure, or file system, hard coded into it, then everyone who is running a distro that is not Red Hat is screwed. The alien package tries to do its best to convert .rpm's to .deb's for file install locations. But if the program has hardcoded file structure in the binary or scripts then the effort of converting the .rpm to a .deb is useless because the program will not run unless it finds the files in the places that it expects it. I agree that there there has to be a standard used by ALL Linux distros so that commercial vendors do not have to worry about which distro to be compatible with. -- Brian --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Never criticize anybody until you have walked a mile in their shoes, because by that time you will be a mile away and have their shoes." - unknown Mechanical Engineering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Purdue University http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis ---------------------------------------------------------------------