On 06 Feb, Andy Sy ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said: Speaking as a Debian sorta-newbie.. =)
> 1. dpkg looks mighty similar to rpm in terms > of functionality, is one clearly superior to > another or is it more of just reinventing the > wheel? While RPMs are supposed to be easier to roll (just ask William), the strict Debian policy helps improve package quality. Most packages have well-defined relationships to other packages (in so many different ways!), and I find that the configuration scripts often included by Debian packagers are very helpful. It helps that there's a whole category of dpkg and apt-related tools. =) Another cool thing about Debian is that there are so many packages to choose from in the sid branch. Granted, RPM seems to be a more popular standard, but the RPMs on RPMFind tend to be: (a) the same RPMs on your CD (probably newer versions, though) (b) from another distro with possibly different ways of working (c) sourceforge versions, but there aren't that many Different distros even declare different dependencies, so sometimes it's hard to use packages from another distro. perl-base? No perl-base on Redhat, I think. It's a Mandrake thing. I guess that's why I really appreciate the Debian policy, although it must make life hard for maintainers. > 2. apt-get sounds similar to FreeBSD's ports > system. How does it compare in terms of ease > of use and features (for getting both > precompiled and source packages)? I haven't used ports all that much. I switched back after learning why BSD-style options were called that way. But apt-get makes it really easy to get precompiled and source: apt-get install <foo> to get the binaries, apt-get source <foo> to get the source. You can probably even specify the exact version, but I've never had to.. =) -- Sacha Chua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3 BS CS geek =) Ateneo Cervini-Eliazo Networks (ACENT) tel: 63(2) 426-6001 loc 5925 BOFH excuse #162: bugs in the RAID _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
