Re: X Windows for Hurd

[Jeff Bailey]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 10:00:41AM -0600, Daniel E Baumann wrote:

> > This sounds great! I have wanted to make a Linux distribution for a
> > long time. No doubt I can do it, but the package manager that
> > RedHat has is superior, and so is their installation program, so I'll
> 
> rpm superior to dpkg and apt? No way. I left RedHat months ago for Debian 
> GNU/Linux and I haven't looked back. 

I used to really prefer rpm.  It took me about an hour to learn RPM, and 
be able to produce .rpm files.  Debian I'm still learning.  I tried to 
use dselect once, and it installed a whole bunch of crap that I had 
intentionally not wanted on my system.

But I would never go back to RedHat because of apt. 

Debian gets people to commit to updating programs and screens developers
who put thing on the official site.  Because of this dependancies are 
taking care of accurately.  It means no more headache of trying to find 
something in contrib.  If it's not really weird, *someone* has packaged 
it already.  And figured out what was required to support it.  If you 
find a mistake, the bug tracking system is open and public.  You tell 
them what the failed dependancy was and it gets fixed.  Frequently very 
quickly.

Now I will agree that the Debian install could use a date with a bulk 
eraser.  But unlike RedHat, (which I had taken to reinstalling every 6 
months because I was forced to go back to compiling source to keep my 
distro up to date) I don't see needing to reinstall Debian for a long 
time, which makes crappy installation way more palitable.

-- 
No matter how big the bell, if you only tap it, it can give out only a
faint sound.  We must understand thoroughly that the weakness of the blow,
not a fault of the bell makes the sound poor. 
 - Koichi Tohei