wrote:
> The best way to muck up any system is to install external packages.
And therein lies the rub: the complicated dependency repositories often
demonstrate fragility when faced with external packages. This results in
an usually flawless installation process for internal packages, but a good
deal of overhead for external packages.
> 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.
This is one of Slackware's strengths. When you really want some particular
package or version of a package that doesn't exist in a repository, you're
usually stuck with complicated work to bring that package in, and
oftentimes, the packaging that you can get isn't right, so you have to do
it by hand. Doing it by hand in a system like deb is pretty involved.
In Slackware, it is quite common to grab external packages, and the
process has evolved into SlackBuilds. Because the packaging system is
fairly simple, it's very easy to make packages for it, and SlackBuilds are
a way to easily make sure that the package does what you want. The
overhead associated with building one of these packages is much less than
something like Debian or BSD ports. I have 20 - 30 external packages
installed on my Slackware box, and these are all easily maintained through
SlackBuilds.
> 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.
Indeed, in large repositories that are available for Debian based systems,
you usually don't need to do external packages, provided that you can live
with the versions in the system. Fortunately, this works well for most
people. :-) But boy, it's a pain when you have to go out of the "norm."
Aaron W. Hsu
--
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. -- C. S. Lewis
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