[ale] linus doesn't like Debian?

[Michael B. Trausch]

This is getting kind of long, so let me first preface this entire
message with

Jeff Lightner, on 08/23/2007 08:47 AM said:
> rpm all by itself doesn't do any dependency checking but yum which is
> on most systems that use rpm's DOES.

I guess CentOS and Fedora do not use yum as the back-end for their
update manager?

> 
> Funny to me is folks pooh-poohing the idea that Debian is a
> "technical" thing relying on "source" compilations and then arguing
> that Debian package management is superior because of the way it
> handles "source" installations.  You can't have it both ways.
> 

Of course not!  The infrastructure provided by the Debian distributions
is just that---an infrastructure.  It's nothing more, and nothing less.
 Any distributor or user can make that infrastructure as hard or as easy
as they want to use.  The best thing about it though is that the
functionality for just about anything you'd want to do with it is built
right into it so that your average user doesn't have to know anything
about it, and the person that wants to do all sorts of strange and
potentially unsafe things with it is able to do so.

> 
> The average "user" (i.e. non-geek) does NOT want to compile source - 
> hell they don't even want to have to install packages after the fact.
> They just want it to work out of the box for what they do (web
> surfing, playing music, playing videos and playing games).   On this
> score there aren't many distros that aren't lacking which is why it
> is so difficult for us to convert friends and family to Linux.   All
> of these things CAN be done on Linux of course but they take effort
> the "users" are not comfortable with.
> 

Windows loses on this front far more than most Linux systems.  I have
yet to see an adequate default install of Windows---even from an OEM---
that doesn't require several pieces of software to be retrieved and
installed.  At least under Debian distributions, I can have a single
list of packages to install on any new system, and run two commands
consecutively (even embedded into a script that makes it easy for
end-users) and it's done.  Nothing complex about it---it just works.

This is why I recommend Ubuntu to new users, and I offer to set it up
for them.  I then install a series of often-requested packages, so that
they don't have to do so, and they're good to go from there.  And they
still have all the choices that freedom demands that they have for
modifying their systems in the future, of course, even if they elect to
never use it.

> 
> Having installed Debian (Sarge and Woody) along with Redhat and
> Fedora I am continually amazed at folks that think that the apt style
> utilities are easier than Yum.  These apt utilities IMO are NOT
> intuitive to use at all.
> 

I would like to ask what isn't intuitive about them... the utilities are
structured such that there are only a few commands and parameters that
the average user needs to know, if they don't want to use a front-end
like Synaptic:

apt-cache search - find software
apt-get install - install softare
apt-get remove - remove software (preserving configurations)
apt-get --purge remove - remove software and configs that belong to that
	software

Two commands, and four parameters, isn't all that bad.  Synaptic makes
everything point-and-click, and the Update Manager provided with systems
like Ubuntu makes keeping systems up-to-date quite simplistic.

Perhaps an extra link to apt-get called "apt-remove" which implies the
"remove" parameter would make it slightly more intuitive, but that's the
only thing that I can think of.  On the other hand, 'rpm' is a
one-stop-shop for everything, IIRC, and even yum calls upon 'rpm' to do
the heavy lifting, as I understand it.

> 
> The comment about dependency hell was a reference to what occurred 
> before yum - one would try to install an rpm only to be told they
> needed another rpm which in turn would require another and so on.
> Yum on the other hand will let you pick the package you're interested
> in and find the dependencies needed to install it on YOUR system and
> install those at the same time.
> 

So, update management systems on modern systems do not use 'yum', I
guess?  If that's the case, then they should be fixed to use this thing,
but if they do, then there is still something desperately wrong.  I
question the stability of anything where core functionality is moved out
of the core and into an add-on for it to deal with it.

Keep in mind that I don't stay that close to those systems, but if I sit
in front of one to work on it for someone else, and what is a two-click
process on Ubuntu takes me two clicks, three hours, and then a failure
(with the failure message telling me to start fscking around with 'rpm'
by hand), I am hardly convinced that the core issues with rpm have been
solved.

The proper place for dependency management is in the core of the package
management utility, at any rate.  No add on to the package management
system should be required in order for dependency management to be made
simple---that's counterintuitive.  The package manager's job is to
manage packages---otherwise, why have one at all?

My experience with RPM, including recent experience, tells me to stay
the hell away from it.  Eric Raymond feels the same way,[1] <opinion>and
the only question that was in my mind when that story came out was "what
took him so long?"</opinion>

> 
> I like the original post though - Now when people tell me other
> distros are superior to Fedora I'll just ask "Then why does Linus
> Torvalds run Fedora?".  I'll get all sorts of OPINIONS which aren't
> any better than mine but will have the satisfaction of knowing that
> the guy that started it all agrees with me.
> 

The facts would seem to point at the idea of RPM being far less stable
and scalable than the Debian package management system---meaning that
the facts also lead to the conclusion that the Debian package management
system is technically superior.  The design of having the dependency
management as a core principle of the package management system goes a
far way in achieving this stability.

If ever Red Hat does fix the design of their package management system,
I would be happy to advocate the use of products that use the system.
Until then, however, I cannot recommend the system to anyone,
particularly not someone who considers themselves to be "computer
illiterate".  There are some RPM distributions that are highly
recommended for doing very nice things in the user environment, but so
long as the package manager is so easily able to be confused, all that
extra shininess is for naught---a broken package manager is a show stopper.

	-- Mike

[1] http://www.linux.com/articles/114233

-- 
Michael B. Trausch              Internet Mail & Jabber: mike at trausch.us
Phone:  (404) 592-5746 x1                        http://www.trausch.us/
Mobile: (678) 522-7934            VoIP: 6453 at sip.trausch.us, 861384 at fwd

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature