Re: Debian vs Red Hat for updates
Howard Mann wrote:
>
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> Hi,
>
> I would like to solicit opinions concerning
> updates in Debian (.deb) vs Red Hat (.rpm).
>
> Pewrmit me an anecdote. I recently wanted to
> install SGML tools, v 2.x. Using an RPM package,
> this failed because of unmet "dependencies."
>
> The version I was trying to install required a
> version of GLIBC 2.0 that I do not have ( I use
> Red Hat 5.0 ) and Python 1.5 - I have Python 1.4.
> When I installed Python 1.5, a number of existent
> apps broke that required Python 1.4 and associated
> apps like "TLinker."
>
> This is obviously very frustrating. Is the upgrade
> process in Debian - using apt-get I presume -
> generally easier ?
>
> I'll move to Debian if accomplishing updates/
> upgrades is simpler and more reliable.
>
> I'd appreciate any general comments.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Howard Mann.
Your problem above would never have happened with Debian's
dpkg/dselect/apt. dpkg is the core program. dselect is a curses
based frontend to dpkg. apt is right now a command-line-only frontend
to dpkg which is far superior, but for the moment it lacks a frontend
(either GUI or console based). So for now, apt can be used either
from the command line, or from within dselect, ie. dselect calls apt
which calls dpkg. At some point apt will replace dselect.
With one location providing a 'complete' archive of all existing deb
packages, ftp.debian.org and mirrors, apt would have automatically
completed your upgrade above. It would have automatically selected
the newer glibc and python packages needed by your SGML package. If
the dependent packages were not there (or not the needed minimum
version) you would be told this. With dselect (dselect->apt->dpkg) a
dependency error screen would pop up and tell you what's missing.
The situation with python is handled as well. An attempt by you to
upgrade python from 1.4 to 1.5, would trigger an error. In dselect, a
screen would pop up and tell you what packages still depend on py 1.4
(a dependency against "1.4 and above" would be ok), and would warn you
to upgrade now would likely break these packages.
--
Ed C.
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