[SGVLUG] RPM hell -- why not just change to debian?

[Dustin]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:

> I have tried to stay out of this because basically a religious
> discussion over which is the best distro.

I don't think that's true unless you insist that, by definition,
everything is equal to everything else and we're all just happy campers.
The difference in willingness to upgrade rather than re-install is *huge*
between Debian and RPM-based distro users, and you cannot explain away
that observation (even if informal) by just saying there must not be a
real difference.  You may explain it other ways not necessarily 
prejudicial to RPM, but not that way.

It is still less true in the case of something wierd like, say, Gentoo,
which is designed to never be re-installed.  Far more effort was put into
that than was ever put into making RH upgradable, because the techniques
used come at considerable cost in other areas and it would be simply
stupid for RH to do the same.  It is just ridiculous to suggest that there
is no difference there, whatever you think of the strangeness that is
Gentoo.

As usual in real life, these are engineering tradeoffs, and you can't have
everything at once.

Tom, I suggest that the sign-in question for the next meeting should be
"what packaging system do you use" and "do you upgrade or re-install?" The
result would make for an interesting group discussion.

> ...Look RPM is used by every
> major commercial distribution, that means that money has been spent to
> make sure that RPMs supports everything that debs does.  Lots of these
> arguments are mute as Debian used to support things that rpm did not
> so Redhat/SUSE/Mandrake(what ever there name is now), paid people so
> that now RPM can do the stuff that Debian can not. There is no RPM
> Hell anymore if you use a modern Distro.

"Look, MS-Windows is used by every major fortune 500 company, that means
that money has been spent to make sure that MS-Windows does everything
that Mac OS and Linux does.  Lots of these arguments are mute as Linux and
Mac OS used to support things that MS-Windows did not so Microsoft paid
people so that now MS-Windows can do the stuff that Linux and Mac OS 
cannot.  There is no MS-Windows instability anymore if you use a modern 
MS-Windows."

The point is, of course, that whatever the truth of your conclusion, the
argument you made cannot be more than suggestive.  The same logic supports 
a lot of erroneous conclusions.

> The Original Posters problem is that they are stuck on RedHat 8(I am a
> RedHat lover, but RH8 the worst RH release ever). That is why they
> quickly moved to RH9.

No question that a distro that old is a definite liability.

Dustin