On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Karl J. Runge wrote:
>> In the past, the [Debian] installs have been truly horrid, but things have
>> improved to the point where they are only mildly unpleasant.
>
> Has it really improved, or have you just gotten used to the bumps in the
> road and now instinctivly know how to nagivate them?
Given that past Debian installs have failed to even create a valid base
installation, I would say, yes, they have improved! They are now at the same
level as, say, Red Hat Linux 3.x. (In fact, the installers of RHL 3.x and
Debian 2.2 are remarkably similar.) However, I sincerely hope Debian's latest
attempt to revamp their installer succeeds. They are at serious risk of
playing catch-up forever.
On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Paul Lussier wrote:
> However, I think that apt and dpkg are a whole lot better than rpm for
> installing packages on a single systems and for dealing with dependancies.
I find RPM seems to make the process of simply installing a bunch of
packages easier than dpkg. dpkg got itself tied into knots W.R.T. dependency
ordering on large installs when I tried Debian 2.2.
On the same note, dpkg makes the conscious design choice that package
installation is an interactive operation, whereas RPM treats packages more
like inert data (like tar). Both approaches have their advantages and
disadvantages, but I strongly prefer the RPM approach. Personal preference.
I definitely agree that dpkg/APT handle installation dependencies better.
RPM only checks dependencies; it cannot solve them. External tools such as
rpmfind/autorpm make things easier, but they still have the air of something
bolted onto the side, rather than designed into the system. APT is a much
more comprehensive system.
On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Paul Lussier wrote:
>> FWIW, Red Hat nicely asks you which partitions you want to format before it
>> formats them.
>
> So does Debian. That wasn't his point, rather, that you can follow the
> sequence or deviate it from it, and get back to where you need to be to
> continue. This is something that RH doesn't allow from what I remember.
Red Hat's installer allows you to back up as often as you like. It
generally allows you to skip most things, although generally not with an
explicit menu option like Debian. Some things are a bit of a hassle, e.g., you
have to proceed several steps into the X configuration process before you are
given the option to skip it. :-( Talk about missing the point...
Red Hat's installer is single-pathed, AFAIK, but although I believe Debian's
installer allows multiple paths, that feature wasn't used much (that I saw),
so I suspect it may not be all that useful in practice.
On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Jeffry Smith wrote:
> The packages.gz file includes not just the name of the package, but info
> on the conflicts, depends, etc, for dist-upgrade to determine what is
> needed or if it will cause problems on your system.
One of the things I really *like* about Debian is the external metadata
provided with the package sets. With Red Hat, for example, there is no
built-in way to find out which (uninstalled) package provides a particular
file. The only way to get an idea of what is available in a package set is to
use a utility which scans every package, collects the information, and then
presents it to you. Blech. The UI might have been horrible, but the database
behind dselect was far superior to RPM.
> Assuming your /etc/apt/sources.list is pointed to potato (the current
> stable), breaking the system is darned near impossible, since stable is,
> well, stable.
Hah. Hah. Using nothing but the CD-ROMs and dselect, I managed to hose up
2.2 pretty damn well. Actually, the system itself was working, it was just
that dpkg pretty much had heart failure every time I invoked it, which made
adding to the system rather difficult. I did this by undertaking a massive
package selection/deselection in dselect right after doing the base install,
so I just wiped it and started over. Maybe there was a better way to get dpkg
unwedged, but I was not impressed.
I guess, ultimately, dpkg has too much state for my tastes. An RPM package
is either installed or it isn't, just like a file is either present or isn't.
dpkg has selected but uninstalled packages, installed but unconfigured
packages, configured but deselected packages, unconfigured reinstalled coaxial
shielded packages, dyslexic agnostic Christian packages, etc., etc. I found
it too over-engineered and fragile a system in that respect.
--
Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Net Technologies, Inc. <http://www.ntisys.com>
Voice: (800)905-3049 x18 Fax: (978)499-7839
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