On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:16:24 -0500, Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Debian is unpopular Many places where Debian has changed the "globbed" > config. Many people HATE little bitty files to make things work. Me, > best thing since Sliced Bread. Except I'd rather see --keepcomments as > default and changed to --removecomments. My only gripe, pretty minimal. >
As a general note, I find it annoying, frustrating, and confusing whenever ANY debian package has a substantially different installation or configuratin mechanism than the mechanism documented by the software publisher. Taking Exim as an *example* of this, when I installed Exim, and ran into some problems configuring it the way I wanted, comparing the application documentation on the Exim website with what apt-get installed I found it utterly different. The Exim website gracefully acknowledged the Debian configuration mechanism as "elegant" and then advised that if I needed help with it, I should contact the debian distribution owners. Maybe I missed some great documentation out there, but using Google, I found no such documentation. Exim is by no means the only package to do non-standard things, it seems like a debian package maintainer's sole objective in life is to take a perfectly reasonable ./configure ./make ./make install and do utterly wacked out things to it. The upside *may* be having a debian system that does things the "debian" way, which way is more "elegant" (or more secure, a perfectly laudable goal) -- but the downside is clearly that the installation, and often configuration support from the original software team is largely useless. I am perfectly open to understanding why my frustrations with debian packages are (A) due to some ignorance of debian documentation, or (B) inherently unreasonable. Currently, I feel they are (C) the cost of working with an otherwise excellent, reliable, and philosophically congenial distribution. Packages I expect to work closely with (ie., more than just run-it-out-of-the-box) I usually bypass the debian package system and get the manufacturer's distribution. Sincerely, -bluejack -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
