Re: conflicts in Debian Distributions
On Mon, Oct 26, 1998 at 11:05:42AM -0800, Kenneth Scharf wrote:
The point Kenneth is making is true. However:
> You can't have two (or more) mail clients installed at the same
> time,
...
> There are at least half a dozen window managers in X for example,
> you can only use one. Here though all may be copied to the disk,
> but only one may be 'installed'.
Both of these examples are bogus. You can have as many mail clients
(mail user agents, MUA) installed as you want. You can have as many
window managers installed as you want. This is a good thing. I (and
our sysadmin) like Mutt but most people here like Pine; it would be a
pain in the butt saying to others that they can't use Pine because we
like Mutt and one can't install both. Similarly, different people
like different window managers. The point is that these all are
*user* programs, so can coexist in a system.
The real problem is with system daemons. For example: you cannot run
two different mail transfer agents (MTA) on one system simultaneously.
But this is not a problem, as you don't want to run more than one MTA.
You pick one, it's your call as the sysadmin, and your choice isn't
such a big problem to users because to most of them MTAs are (nearly)
all alike - they provide the same services in a uniform manner (save
qmail).
> I would agree however, that a good description of each package would
> help you decide what to install.
Please tell me, what you would consider a good description! Feel free
to pick some packages and rewrite their descriptions; you can post the
results here (or to debian-devel, if you prefer) for public scrutiny.
Antti-Juhani
Ps. No, these systems I was referring to are not Debian boxen (they
run Solaris or RedHat depending on machine), but a) it is not
important to my point and b) it's not my decision, I'm not the
sysadmin here.
--
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho A7 <gaia@iki.fi> ** <URL:http://www.iki.fi/gaia/> **
The FAQ is your friend.
Trust the FAQ.
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