[PLUG] For The SysAdmin Gurus

[Alan Olsen]

On 8/28/06, Elliott Mitchell <ehem at m5p.com> wrote:
>
> >From: plug_0 at robinson-west.com
> > On package management being so hyped by people, that's exactly why my
> > oldest brother abandoned Debian.  He got overwhelmed by Debian wanting
> > to install kde on him.  Being a slackware fan before, he still had
> > problems with dependencies in Debian.  I think he's back to Slackware,
> > though he could just be an OSX user.
>
> It was going to install KDE because he wanted a package that requires the
> KDE libraries to install. Debian's front ends make it pretty easy to
> determine what package(s) depend on those libraries if you want to remove
> the libraries. Debian will even listen to you if you get insistant and
> tell it to remove libraries and damn the consequences. I have noticed the
> situation of all the booby-trap packages that suck in KDE/emacs without
> it being obvious, it would be nice to have a
> do-not-even-suggest-installing-this-package flag, similar to the "hold"
> flag.


Yum has an extension that will so this.  Smart does as well, if I remember
correctly.


> The decision is simple, do you go for package management systems which
> guarentee (or should guarentee) that all packages will work, but will
> suck in packages/libraries you don't want; or do you go for a system
> where you manually select all packages to install and can prevent the
> installation of undesirable ones, but at the cost of manual dependancies
> and possibly broken packages due to forgetting a library? I don't think
> it is worth my time handling dependancies fully manually.


I have done RPM updates by hand.  Not fun.  Yum and similar tools make the
process so much nicer.  (Especially with tools like yumex.)

Has apt ever been modified to handle multiple architecture installs?  (Like
x86_64.)


> According to the posted interview, Fedora is not bleeding edge.  I've had
> > problems more often with CentOs more than I have with Fedora.  Fedora
> does
> > seem to be getting fat though.  Fortunately, the focus now appears to be
> > trimming  the fat.  Is there a free up-to-date maximum rpm floating
> around?
>
> Heh! Fedora *isn't* bleeding edge?! Then what is??? You suggesting
> nothing other than Debian-unstable qualifies? (I'd place it beyond, but
> oh well)
>
>
I always though debian-unstable was pretty far behind the curve.  The ones
at the front tend to be Fedora and Gentoo. (As well as OpenSuSE.)