Re: [PLUG] dpkg help needed

[Dan Crosta <dcrosta@sccs.swarthmore.edu>]

On Feb 8, 2006, at 8:12 PM, John Von Essen wrote:
> Why can't debian and other distro's just steal the ports system  
> design from FreeBSD and call it a day.

Well, Gentoo's "portage" package manager is named that way for a  
reason... and it works quite well, if you don't mind waiting 8-12  
hours for openoffice to compile. There are advantages to a binary  
package system -- like the "it just works (TM)" factor, and quick  
installs.

> My experience with debian apt-get is that after enough time passes  
> and enough pkg's are installed, it's guaranteed to get screwed up  
> so bad - its unfixable. At that point you have re-install the OS  
> and start over from scratch.

Are you mixing distributions? Repositories? If you stick to Debian's  
repositories (or mirrors thereof) you're practically guaranteed to  
have a working system for as long as you want...it's the whole idea  
of Debian (or one of them) that nothing unexpected happens as a  
result of any of the Debian tools...and it's largely true.

For the uninitiated, allow me to recommend a fellow former Swarthmore  
student's book, "The Debian System" (by Martin Krafft), which spends  
a great deal of time explaining how APT, aptitude and dpkg all work  
together to give you a stable system, how to use the two, how to  
intelligently mix distributions and repositories (with APT pinning)  
and a great many other things handy to users and administrators of  
Debian systems.

> RHEL's channel rpms are nice, but if you dont have entitlement, it  
> can be pain downloading them manually.
>
> Though... Nothing holds a candle to the FreeBSD ports system.
>
> -John

dsc
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