Re: deb vs. rpm

[Randy Edwards <redwards@golgotha.net>]

> Could someone please enlighten me to the differences in functionality
> between deb and rpm packages?

   Thorsten, check out a nice page which Joey put up summarizing features of
the different package formats.  You can find it at
<http://kitenet.net/~joey/pkg-comp.html>.

   Regarding dependencies, I picked up a Red Hat 5.1 CD-ROM a while ago and
played with it (I've since given it away) just to see the differences.  I was
surprised at how crudely Red Hat handled dependencies.  Compared to dselect's
"pop up a help screen and 'hey, resolve this mess' with 'here are my
recommendations'" method, Red Hat was downright barbaric about the process.

   While I don't claim to be a Red Hat expert, all I could get it to do was to
give me a warning about dependencies, and it expected me to *manually* (look
of shock on face!:-) go out and (A) find where those packages were in its
package manager, and (B) do the grunt work of trying to remember the
conflicting names and then selecting/deselecting them.  After that experience
I've never uttered a single bad word about dselect, apt-get, or dpkg.:-)

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