DEB vs RPM
I just received my September issue of LinuxFormat
Magazine. The following from page 62 should be of
interest to this group:
RPMs in, DEBs out
LINUX STANDARDS BOARDS SETTLES ON RPM
The Linux Standards Board has recently released
1.0 of the LSB specification, and have agreed on
RPM as the standard package format. This has
naturally caused consternation and friction in the
Debian community.
There has been a long standing - and heated -
dicussion on the relative merits of RPM's and
DEB's. While RPM appear to be supported in more
distributions than DEB, it seems that a DEB-based
system is more reliable when upgrading and
updating distributions. Debian has long hailed
it's apt-get technology, and many users find it
superior to RPM's.
The true key to the success of DEB packages has
not been in apt, but in the packages themselves
and the fact that they conform to strict Debian
policy, and hence have dependency information
correctly identified. Whether a similar policy
would be applied to RPM seems unclear, although if
they are to be as reliable as DEB's a policy may
be needed. Successful standardisation usually
relies on enforcement of policy and procedure, and
this seems to be the case here.
The decision is a key move for Linux developers
and distributors and should make distribution and,
crucially, installation of software a much easier
proposition.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
Reply to: