Re: Really have to use .deb to install anything?
>> Tristan Day <GreenSideburns@csi.com> writes:
>> TD> Do you really have to use a .deb installer file for every program
>> TD> you want to install?
>>
>> Only if you want to be able to deal with the program using the Debian
>> package manager later.
>>
>> TD> Thing is that I accidently downloaded the wrong netscape (v4.2 or something
>> TD> similar) and it was 8 megs long so it took 2 hours on my humble 14.4
>> TD>
>> TD> Anyway, it wouldn't work because the .deb installer is for 3.01 so I got
>> TD> that version (only 2 megs) and it worked.
>> TD>
>> TD> I'm sure that if I had a .deb installer for v4.2 (or whichever it is) then
>> TD> it would work in Debian, but we have to wait for a .deb file don't we??
>>
>> There's a Netscape 4.0 installer in the upcoming Debian 2.0 release.
>> The installer was in the "unstable" version of Debian for quite a while.
I don't think there was any reason, why you couldn't use it in a bo system,
as a installer it consisted of scripts ?
>> TD> So is there a way of installing a program in a tar.gz file without
>> TD> a .deb file? All gunzip gives me is the filename of the zip file
>> TD> minus the .gz bit.
>>
>> Under Unix, two separate programs do the work that DOS's pkzip does.
>> tar takes multiple files and stuffs them into a single file. gzip
>> takes that single file and compresses it. Probably the easiest way to
>> deal with .tar.gz files is with tar:
>>
>> View a .tar.gz file: tar tvzf <file>.tar.gz
>> Expand a .tar.gz file in current directory: tar xvzf <file>.tar.gz
One really handy filemanager is mc (Midnight Commander), with which you can
do those things, but also 'dive' into a package (.tar.gz, or even into a .deb!)
and take a look inside. It uncompresses the package into a virtual fs or something
and you can for example extract one file out of the package.
>> TD> In DOS there's quite a nice zip utility called pkware which unzips
>> TD> a package of files which includes an executable installer. Surely
>> TD> that's a much better way of doing things?
>>
>> There's a couple of things wrong with this concept that package
>> managers in general are supposed to fix. Say you're trying to install
>> MegaFoo, which needs the BarBaz library to run. Under Windows, every
>> program that needs BarBaz includes BARBAZ.DLL and tries to install it,
>> so you either get n-billion different copies of it or one copy (in
>> C:\WINDOWS, probably) that only works with some of the programs that
>> need to use it. The Debian package manager, dpkg, deals with this by
>> making every library be a separate package. You can't install the
>> megafoo package until you install libbarbaz1. Using a package manager
>> also makes it possible for programs and libraries to be cleanly
>> deleted (i.e. dpkg --remove megafoo). How many different programs are
>> there to do this on Windows? :-)
And the thing the thing I love in Linux and Debian is real version-control in
major versions etc. For example you have that BARBAZ.DLL, and some program
installs an newer version, that breaks couple older programs (and you are in
the mercy of the commercial entities to provide newer versions, for which
they more than often want money). Not to mention that you most propably can't
have .DLL's anywhere than C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM.... (No barbaz.so.version etc..)
>> TD> Also, this may detract some people from debian linux or indeed any
>> TD> of the linux distributions in favour of Win95 + NT + DOS, because
>> TD> you can't get the latest version of anything, and many Win95 + NT
>> TD> + DOS people are very much concerned with getting the very latest
>> TD> version of a program such as netscape, but with linux they'll have
>> TD> to install an older version of everything unless it's supported as
>> TD> a patch or comes with a .deb file.
(to original)
Can you get version of OS that has been compiled for the first
time just hours (or more likely minutes) ago? With Netscape I
should have to check the dates that 4.05 was released under
Windows and Linux, but I wouldn't wonder if it was minutes apart.
Nothing forces to use .deb - it is just insanely more easy to way
to keep your system consistent. I also don't think it is too messy and
hard to keep track on those few (Yet To Be Debianized) pieces
of software that you can install in /usr/local hierarchy.
Generally: nothing in Linux and especially Debian forces you to nothing.
>> Debian usually maintains two distributions, one of which is a "stable"
>> distribution (i.e. Debian 1.3, "bo") which _works_. Maybe the
>> software's a little older than it could be, but you know it's not
>> broken. The other release is "unstable", which has the newest
>> versions of everything. It's not guaranteed to work, though, and
>> isn't really suitable for running your corporate web server since
>> things can change on a day-to-day basis. (Right now there's also
>> "frozen", which is in testing to become the new "stable" release.)
>>
>> (Thought: normally Debian gets released about every three months,
>> IIRC. The 1.3->2.0 update is taking a while because of the updated
>> GNU C library, going towards eight months. Which M$ software gets
>> updated that often? :-)
Not to mention the 'few' patches from MS? About once in three years or so.
And that is with 'OS', applications have a little swifter going out,
but they still can't beat the usual 2 weeks to 2 months cycle that is
going on in software community.
--j
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: