Zak Elep wrote:
> For me, if it wasn't Debian, then it would have been Slackware or Gentoo. > Slackware 'coz it does have some rudimentary package system that can be > fairly extened using well-tuned bash/perl scripts; Gentoo 'coz like you, it > has a good dependencies system and a clear choice to build from source, the > result having a fairly stable, optimized system.
When I started out with Linux back in the 1.x.x kernel days, I tried out Slackware (3.x iirc) and RedHat (3.x/4.x), . The minute I tried to mix and match packages I compiled myself into my RH system, I gave up on Redhat and its infernal RPM system.
Interestingly enough, ever since then, I never found myself missing/needing automated dependencies checking... the way Slackware lays out its packages, it's quite easy to manually figure out which components depend on which. I have just learned to avoid getting anal about disk space and generally install packages by set (no need to remove every small bit of fat). So, for instance, if I need X, I generally install all X packages (probably just over a dozen or so) that are obviously nonoptional only excluding, for example, non-English fonts.
Have never found myself needing slapt-get, swaret or 3rd party tools like them for Slackware package management and I have installed a lot of outside (non-Slackware) packages from source. (Actually this could be precisely the reason why a tool like swaret, slapt-get might actually make things more complicated). I think that if one doesn't have a clear view of which packages depend on which, then that counts as 'a little knowledge' which as everyone knows is a dangerous thing. :-)
The standard Slackware pkgtools functionality (plus being clueful enough to check inside /var/log/packages) essentially gives you Windoze's Add/Remove functionality and is even more reliable in that it doesn't sneakily leave files around when you uninstall.
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