On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 11:22:49PM -0400, steve szmidt wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 October 2008, Eben King wrote:
>
> > I installed it with dpkg (no dependencies needed to be satisfied), but
> > synaptic uninstalled it the next chance it had. So the only way of keeping
> > it installed (maybe) would have been to use apt-get from then on.
>
> And that summarizes what is the worst with some packet managers.
>
> Once I decided to go with a 64 bit O/S I went through over 100 distro's
> looking for something that would cover my points. I'm tired of tracking and
> spending a lot of time maintaining the system and wanted to have less of
> that.
>
> In the end I decided to go with Kubuntu. A fair amount of packets available,
> does a pretty good job of keeping things working. But, there is TOO much
> of "we know what's best for you" attitude and bypassing me. If it just said
> something like We have found this to be the best choice what do you want?
> Then I could agree or disagree.
s/packet/package/g
Yep, no package manager avoids this. If you really want to get your
hands dirty, you can go for Linux From Scratch or Gentoo. But I'm not
even sure that Gentoo avoids this. The worst of it is when they
restructure a major package (like X Window) and rework all the
dependencies. Then you can easily get a system wedged so that you have
to uninstall a mass of packages and reinstall them from scratch to get
the system working again. Then there are the packages which have
identically named files on disk, which interfere with each other's
installation.
And all this is why the only time I use aptitude is to see if a package
is available and what it does. After I find that out, I drop to the
command line and run apt-get install blah. That way 18,000 other
packages don't try to uninstall, drag in 20,000 more updates, and
whatnot.
One day they'll get this straight, but I have to say that package
dependencies and their shades of nuance ("depends", "suggests",
"recommends", "conflicts", "throws-a-hissy-ifs") are a hairier brand of
programming than I would ever want to tackle.
Paul
-- Paul M. Foster ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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