[ale] Favorite distros

Christopher R. Curzio ale at accipiter.org
Tue Aug 27 09:28:14 EDT 2002


I don't know about that. 

I've been using Slackware since the days of '96 (which may, or may not be
before or after your experience), and I've yet to encounter a single piece
of software that I couldn't get running without a lot of trouble at all.
(On the part of Slack, anyway. Much was pilot-error.) I run Slackware on
all of my machines, and have never found a piece of software that couldn't
be compiled with minimal effort. Sure, a few programs here and there will
choke when ./configure can't find something. No big deal. I go to the
related site, download what it needs, and compile that. Getting to the
'make' step has never taken any more than 20 minutes, that I can recall.
(I've *never* found myself having to upgrade gcc to compile/install a
piece of software. Ever.) Any decent webpage for a piece of software will
list the required libraries and such, so it's trivial to grab those,
compile them, *then* install the original package. As I said, I've been
running Slack since '96 (no other distros on MY machines), and have had no
issues with this at all.

As another longtime Slackware user, I can honestly say that if package
dependancy management was such a critical necessity, I'd probably miss it.
Seems to me that Slackware (and its users) are doing just fine with what
we have. ;) In all honesty, I find RPM to be a nightmare. I've been told
that this isn't necessarily on the part of RPM as it is on the people who
create RPM packages, but I've just never had a problem with either a
source .tar.gz, or a Slackware .tgz. RPM and its constant whining about
dependancies makes me want to hurt someone. Apt seems cool enough, though.


By the way, pkgtool *does* handle basic dependancy checking, but I usually
compile from source anyway. The only time pkgtool is relevant on my
systems is A) When I've done a fresh slackware installation and I want to
get rid of the stray packages that I don't need, or B) When I want to
remove a package I've installed with checkinstall, but have forgotten the
name and need to browse a list. When I do know the name, I just use
removepkg.

-- 
Christopher R. Curzio     |  Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax
http://www.accipiter.org  |  si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
:wq!


Thus Spake byron at cc.gatech.edu (Byron A Jeff):
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 08:44:33 -0400 (EDT)


> > 
> > What?
> > 
> > > Slack is a total loss here because almost no one builds 
> > > precompiled Slack packages anymore
> > 
> > http://www.linuxpackages.net
> 
> That's a start. It's still missing a lot of stuff.
> 
> > 
> > > compiling from source is nearly impossible
> > 
> > I run ./configure ; make ; checkinstall on hundreds of things under
> > Slackware with absolutely no problems. Where are you getting your
> > information?
> 
> From nearly 10 years of continuous use. I'm not talking about the actual
> Installation processes. I'm talking about the dependency process.  You
> want some piece of software. It needs SDL version 1.2 or higher. SDL
> wants some audio library.  The audio library requires some ALSA tools.
> ALSA only compiles with gcc 2.96 or somesuch, which requires you to
> recompile your glibc libraries. By the time you get back to the
> beginning of the dependancy tree, it simply isn't worth the effort to
> compile the program in the first place. Trust me I've slugged through
> many a dependancy tree getting stuff installed on my 7.1 box.
> 
> BTW I have exactly the same issues with Perl and its modules. It's not
> the fact that they are difficult to install, it's the fact that you have
> to spend time and energy locating, downloading, installing packages in a
> particular order in order to get an app to run.
> 
> I'm a longtime Slack user. I have no compunction do diss it. But in
> today's Linux software world where everything is interdependant on
> everything else, package dependancy management is a critical tool. Slack
> doesn't have it, Gentoo and Debian do.
> 
> BAJ
> 
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