> I am one of those 'that have only used an RPM-based distribution' guy.
> I tried several Ubuntu versions in my VMware a little and had run into
> some problem installing some packages.
These were packages shipped with Ubuntu or external packages?
The best way to muck up any system is to install external packages.
The packages that actually ship with the distro (even the
Community-supported pacakges) have to comply with strict policy
requirements.
> I claim that I am both very experienced (in RPM-based area) and a
> novice (in DEB-based area). Yes, RPM system has its many problems but
> I can get by most of them.
My areas of expertise are the inverse.
My big problem with RPM-based distros is that the RPM packaging system
has been a huge thorn in the RedHat developer's side for years. Their
management always made other things a priorities until a group of the
developers got so fed up with it that they started Foresight.
That is, the folks most familiar with RPM-based distros think the whole
RPM-based packaging system stinks and should have been replaced in-whole
years ago.
> I have also created many RPMs using my own spec files. Bear in mind
> that RPM system (and I believe this holds for any other systems
> such as DEB-based or Gentoo as well) is only as good as the one who
> wrote the spec file. A badly written spec file can screw up many
> things either causing lots of unnecessary dependencies, installing
> files to the wrong location, or having incorrect assumption in their
> post-installation script(s), etc.
That is certainly true.
Now down-loading a third-party DEB file *usually* has problems. I've
found myself downloading the source when a site offers a DEB package,
just so I could make the DEB less broken.
I never use third-party packages, so I never really have problems.
When I need an external package I get the source and use GNU Stow.
GNU Stow is my friend.
> I have run into similar situations with efile in Gentoo, too. In my
> limited experience with Synaptic, there are situations that it could not
> resolve dependency.
The big difference there is that with DEB-based systems you rarely
actually need to use external repositories. :) Using stable versions of
DEB-based distributions I've never run in to missing dependancies.
> So to be fair, RPM-based system is not perfect but I am pretty
> comfortable using it in my daily job. :-)
That's the important part. You need to be comfortable with it. :)
Cheers,
Steven Black
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