Debian flamewar (was: OpenOffice doc...)

[Cole Tuininga]

Mmmm ... distro flamewars in the morning for breakfast .... yummy...
*grin*

On Wed, 2005-02-09 at 22:42 -0500, Benjamin Scott wrote:
> Long-time members of this list will recognize the subject, which I drag
> out whenever I get particularly irritated by all the Debian elitists who
> think nobody's ever installed software before.

Woah hoss!  8)  There is no claim below of Debian being better than
anything (here's my original comment - judge for yourself).  

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, at 4:27pm, colet at code-energy.com wrote:
> > Debian's equivalent of "rpm" is "dpkg".  Apt is sort of like up2date on
> > a large quantity of steroids.  8)

The OP made a comment about wishing that there was a single command like
the "rpm" command for debian.  I was giving the analogy to offer
explanation - not comparison of distros.  I don't think I was out of
line to imply that apt does a lot of things that up2date doesn't do.
This wasn't intended to claim apt as the be-all end-all of package
management, but rather to compare tools I was familiar with.

That said, I've never been one to step away from a nice toasty
flamewar.  ;)

>   I've never, ever been that impressed by the functionality of apt-get vs
> anything else.  Yes, it manages package dependencies.  So do/did yum,
> up2date, rpmfind, and autorpm.  

Out of curiosity, does yum do something like apt's "apt-cache search"
function?  I've been out of the rpm world long enough to have never used
yum and I just remember really being impressed by "apt-cache search"
when I switched to debian (circa Redhat 7.2ish).  I still find it to be
an inordinately helpful command.

> I've been having my RPM dependencies solved
> for me for years and years.  It just really ain't all that impressive.  Get
> over yourselves.

We would, if you rpm zealots would just recognize our superiority.
^
|
|
*Joke!  Joke!*

Flamewars aside, I think that part of the zeal towards apt for folks
like me is that it does so much more than just dependency resolution.

>   The size of Debian's main package repository (the "distribution", really)
> is really what most Debian zealots like when they say they like apt-get.  
> It isn't the tool, it's the effort that goes into that repository.  That
> repository is one of the things that keeps bringing me back to try Debian.

So very true.  It's handy to have them all in one place.  

Again, I'm not familiar with yum, but aren't there yum repositories out
there that allow RPM types to have pretty comparable lists of software?

> That makes "stable"  
> doomed to be perpetually hopelessly out-of-date.  Which is not good.  I keep
> waiting for Debian people to realize that until they break things down into
> manageable chunks, they're never going to make progress.

Some might argue that Ubuntu is accomplishing this.  This isn't to
exclude any other distros or claim any superiority of Ubuntu ;) but to
offer it as an example of some folks that are doing something about what
you're talking about.

>   But all the Debian zealots just say "APT rocks and RPM sux!!" and wonder
> why nobody cares.

Not true - I'm a zealot and I've never said it.  8)  I certainly prefer
apt to rpm and am happy to explain why to whomever cares, but
everybody's certainly entitled to their own preferences.

> On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, at 8:14pm, neil at jenandneil.com wrote:
> > Use apt for more than a day and I'm sure you'll never look back at rpm.
> 
>   Apples and oranges.  "Use yum for more then a day, and I'm sure you'll
> never look back at dpkg" would be equally (in)valid.

Quite true.


>   I've used both dpkg and rpm, and IMNSHO, I think rpm is the better of the
> two.  

This I would also have to agree with.  For those unfamiliar with debian
though, dpkg is a very rarely used or needed command.  Are rpm based
distros getting to be that way as well?  That is, getting to the point
where the rpm command itself is becoming less and less used in favor of
things such as yum?

-- 
"If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check."
        -- Dan Quayle

Cole Tuininga
Lead Developer
Code Energy, Inc
colet at code-energy.com
PGP Key ID: 0x43E5755D