Re: Debian VS. Red Hat
"unlike rpm which you need to compile rpm to access a .rpm."
I think not. I managed to open an .rpm using the Gnome file manager in a
debian-based installation. An .rpm appears to be a cpio archive. Correct me,
folks, if this is misinformation.
Besides, you can always "alien"-ate an .rpm
On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Ethan Benson wrote:
>
> On Sun, Sep 10, 2000 at 01:58:45PM -0700, John L . Fjellstad wrote:
> [snip]
> > distributions can't start using debs. Heck, every major version of
> > RPM is incompatible with previous version anyways. Reason I switched is
> > because the RPM used in 6.x (v3.x) can't read packages for 7 (v4).
> > Now, I don't know how hard it to change the database, but from what I
> > understand, both debs and rpms use text based database, so it shouldn't
> > be impossible.
>
> nope, rpm uses a binary database for everything, and a custom
> fileformat. deb uses a text database (which is trivial to change, and
> extend, debian has done this many times already with no real break in
> compatiblity) .debs are also nothing special, just an ar archive of
> two .tar.gz files. you can extract a .deb on any platform that has
> ar, tar and gzip. unlike rpm which you need to compile rpm to access
> a .rpm.
>
> --
> Ethan Benson
> http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
>
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