Not always, I was turned off from Gentoo because after almost a month of compiling, I still didn't have a Working Web-Server on my P233, (of course this is during my spare time.)
To sum up the managing/installing/upgrading question here are my thoughts. RPMs - Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, Fedora Tarballs - Slackware Portage - Gentoo Apt-get - Debian, Knoppix Here are my pros and cons of each. RPMs are pretty easy to use after you get used to them. Just look for the RPM of the application for the distro that you're using and most of the time you can just install that. There is something called "dependency hell" that can happen where you pretty much have to upgrade all the RPMs to install/upgrade a package. SuSE does a good job at resolving these for you with YaST. I know Mandrake and Fedora have something similar too. Also there are other package managers that are pretty nice such as "yum" and "apt-get" for RPMs. Debian, (once installed,) is very easy to manage. Simply type "apt-get upgrade" and everything on your computer is upgraded for you. You have the choices of installing the bleeding edge version, a testing version or a old but stable version of the applications. I've never installed Debian but I've heard that the install is pretty difficult, but once installed very easy to manage. Since Knoppix came out the installation of a Debian-based system has been much easier. Gentoo is the most recent upgrading system that I know, basically the code is downloaded to the system and compiled and installed. The binaries are then very optimized and there is no cruft. This creates a very fast system and you know everything that is installed on the system unlike other installers that install almost everything under the sun. One pitfall that I can't look past is that installing Gentoo on an older system is *VERY* slow. Not worth, (IMHO) wasting time installing a system. This is a good distro to get your hands *VERY* dirty. Upgrading is also very simple "emerge world" would update all the applications on your computer to the current versions. There is a reason why Slackware users like terming themselves as Slackers. This is also a distro the does not install additional cruft on your system and a system that gets your hands dirty. Unlike Gentoo applications are not compiled so install can be very quick if you know what you're doing. I read cases where people can do installs without a monitor. The installation and upgrading of applications are not as simple as the distros above but third-party applications can assist the installs and upgrades. Swaret and slapt-get are two that I've heard of. I've tried all of these distros and for doing so I've learned that everyone is different and so is every distro... like ice-cream. Not everyone likes Vanilla and some swear by Cookies-n-Cream, some think having gum and nuts in ice-cream is wrong. So try the ones you don't know, (or a least read about them. :) ) and see what you look and dislike. Disclaimer: The contents of this Email is based on the experiences of the sender. Results may very from user to user. Usage in the products stated above may cause side-effects such as weight-gain, hair-loss, high-blood-pressure, sudden Turret's syndrome, decline in social activity and/or mood-swings. The owner apologizes for the length of the Email. User discretion is advised. On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 06:42, Mike Roest wrote: > You might wanna checkout the distrowatch popularity page. They update > it weekly. > > http://www.distrowatch.org/stats.php?section=popularity > > Personally I think the best tool for managing/installing/upgrading > packages is portage from gentoo. Some people get turned off by the > apparent complexity of a gentto install becuase it a source distro. But > I find the install easier then the binary RPM distros (redhat/fedora/suse). > > Just my $.02 > > Juan Alberto Cirez wrote: > > Just a quick question: What are the main Linux distros at the moment(I > > mean the most popular) and what tools do they have for > > managing/installing/upgrading packages....? > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
