QBA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: QBA> I've been browsing through this list contents and learned that QBA> Debian has tools letting me make deb packages from tarballs or QBA> rpms (and source packages too of course).
(Probably 'alien', no?) QBA> But I don't know if it's really useful and needed. I've found that the software selection available as part of Debian is very good. QBA> I must say that I have a bad experience with rpms. Installing QBA> them is trivial but configuring program after installation is a QBA> mission impossible. So when I have a choice to install tarball QBA> or rpm package I always choose tarball. Following instructions QBA> included in INSTALL file gives me certainty that the program will QBA> be well installed and configured. Debian packages tend to be pretty good about being configurable. A well-behaved package will preserve your existing configuration when upgraded; failure to do so is a bug, and these tend to get taken care of pretty well. Also, Debian packages are much better than random Red Hat packages about not spewing things all over your disk; most configuration files live somewhere under /etc. QBA> And there is also a second reason to install tarballs - some cool QBA> programs are available only in this format (e.g. w3mir). See http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages; you can search for a particular package there. QBA> And here's my question: is it a bad idea to install tarballz on QBA> Debian? It's fine, if (a) you install under /usr/local, and (b) you don't expect the packaging system to know about it. IME, installing things from source is far less maintainable than letting the packaging system do its thing. QBA> I read that APT (mostly apt-cache) needs 2-3GB /var partition. QBA> BTW, what does this program need so many bytes for? It mostly needs the space to keep downloaded packages before it installs them. 2-3GB seems excessive to me. You don't need much space for this at all if you're installing the stable distribution off of CDs. -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.mit.edu/~dmaze/ "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal." -- Abra Mitchell
