Re: [aclug-L] Flame bait... (distribution question)

["Greg House" <ghouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Bob Deep <bobd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

>> Are all you Debian users 6 months behind on stuff (the last frozen
release)?
>> Are you getting source for these things and compiling them yourself?
>
>Basically, this is the tried and true way of upgrading.. Get the tarball
>and build it.


Ok, so I'm not so totally off base as I thought.

>Red Hat is not all that much better than any other distribution at
>this.  RPM's may be a bit more common, but they are not nearly as "up to
>date" as the tarballs..


Almost all the new packages I've seen have had both tarballs and RPMS.
Maybe I'm just looking at stuff that's getting worked on by people at RHADL
or something, who have more of a close tie to that package manager (Gnome
and Enlightenment fall into that category).

>The problem with Red Hat is that when you install using a tar file, your
>system's RPM database is not updated, and RPM will blindly do things to
>break you if you are not careful..


This is true for any system with a package manager.  If you go around it, it
can bite you.  That's why I was concerned about installing XFree86 3.3.3.1
from tarballs on a Debian system recently.

Greg

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