Getting back on the Linux box....

[motorollin]

Yes I remember RPM hell from my Slackware/SuSE days. "Package A needs packages B and C". Ok, go and get packages B and C. "Package B needs packages D and E. Package C needs packages F and G". It's bad enough having o hunt around for the correct versions, but when some of them are only available as source, I give up. I don't expect to have to install a development environment and compile software just so I can install a new mail client.

I think a lot of these problems have been resolved with distros which have a dedicated package database. I'm talking about distros like Fedora, Ubuntu, and even Debian. Their packages are tailored to the distro, they're all pre-compiled, and the package managers recorsively resolve the dependencies.

--
moto

[Waccoon]

Is RPM Hell on Fedora anything like on Mandrake?

I tried installing a bunch of stuff as a batch on Mandrake, once, and after spending about 20 minutes thinking, it barfed, telling me that there was a dependency problem.  Of course, it didn't tell me WHAT the dependency was, what it was installing, and it outright quit the entire batch install without letting me skip the package that was causing the problem.

I think that was my 12th Linux distro install, and also my last.

[benJamin]

RPMs never really gave me trouble.  Now-days the errors are generally caused at the packaging end and the dependancies are automatically installed.

It sucks, however, when you install the new kernel and Nvidia drivers but, because you're booting from another drive with a different Grub, the graphics driver fails and X crashes.  I know better now, but non-standard set-ups can cause issues.

Damn Small Linux was good for the ten minutes I played with it.  But I've never looked at it since.

If I can just get Beryl working on my new dual-head setup, I'll be happier, as I've seen a number of Ubuntu desktops doing it no trouble.

After downloading 8GBs over the course of two months, I can afford to persevere for a while yet.

But, yeah, I can see how people would like to avoid Fedora...


benJamin
"Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!"

[trekiej]

Dependencies are terrible aren't they.
 :-D

[Linchpin]

Ubuntu's package manager seems to deal with them ok

[Piru]

Ubuntu is debian based and uses debian package management system, or dpkg. dpkg with apt is rather nice. So yes, Ubuntu doesn't have any problems with this.

Code: [Select]

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
...beats any silly "windows update" nonsense. ;-)