anyone have/tried Mandriva 2005?

[David A. Bandel]

Regurgitating the prose of Net Llama! Net Llama! <netllama at gmail.com> on
Sat, 14 May 2005 12:26:21 -0700:

|On 05/14/2005 09:51 AM, David A. Bandel wrote:
|> Regurgitating the prose of Net Llama! Net Llama! <netllama at gmail.com>
|on > Sat, 14 May 2005 07:42:58 -0700:
|> 
|> |On 05/14/2005 04:35 AM, David Bandel wrote:
|> |> On 5/13/05, Net Llama! <netllama at gmail.com> wrote:
|> |>> must be nice.  why can't everyone just wise up and use RH/FC to
|make > |my >> life easier?  ;)
|> |> 
|> |> Because Debian derivatives are so much easier to maintain (no RPM
|> |> dependency hell), never require reinstalls on "upgrades" (which
|are > |> continuous anyway), and with over 18,000 packages, building
|from > |> source is rare.  And the Debian packages just work together
|and > |rarely > have bugs (they're rather anal about that).
|> |> 
|> |> The above has been the norm for many years.
|> |
|> |Funny, i've never run into any RPM dependency hell, EVER, even back
|in  > |the Caldera days.  I'd consider building from source to a
|positive, not > |
|> |a negative, and RH/Fedora has never required reinstalling to
|upgrade.  > |Overall, your list sounds like a lot of FUD.
|> 
|> If you haven't experienced RPM dependency hell, you must be a
|newcomer > (_very_ recent).
|
|Right, i just entered the world of Linux and i have no clue what i'm 
|talking about.

Sounds like.  I had RPM dependency problems with Caldera.

|
|> 
|> I don't have time to sit around building from source on 60 systems. 
|> Building from source is something I enjoyed years ago when I only had
|to > worry about a handful of systems.  I just don't have that kind of
|time > to waste.
|> 
|> And RH/Caldera/etc., _all_ used to require a complete reinstall. 
|Debian
|
|No they didn't.  RH has included upgrade functionality since at least 
|the 5.x days, and Caldera had it at least since 2.2.

We need to define upgrade, obviously.  
An upgrade is:
While the system is still running, installing new software then
restarting that daemon.  At _most_ it means a quick reboot because we
upgraded the running kernel.  And I can do it from Far Far Away
(Hollywood?, Shrek's swamp?).
An upgrade is not:
Booting into a CD taking all services off-line.  But oh, we could keep
what we had in our home directory, but many of our outdated configs just
can't be saved so we have to spend hours reconfiguring services all over
again.

And an upgrade I can't do from half a continent away is _not_ an
upgrade, it's a reinstall.

|
|> even managed to upgrade through the a.out -> elf changeover and the
|> libc5 -> glibc6 changeover.  I don't remember a single other distro
|that > even attempted it.  I've run Slackware (still do), Debian, RH,
|Caldera, > and a myriad others including a distro I created using Linux
|From > Scratch as a base (a CD distro to boot my wireless systems).  My
|time > now, though, is _way_ too valuable to waste.  I unfortunately
|have very > little time to play.  Debian is the easiest to maintain, so
|that's what > I use.  The rest were _way_ too hard in comparison.
|> 
|> Now, it's possible some of the above information is dated.  But when
|I
|
|Its got to be very very dated, at least 7+ years ago.

I _know_ I was running Caldera less than 7 years ago and with all the
problems I mentioned.

|
|> moved back to Debian from Caldera, the above definitely wasn't FUD. 
|But > I know tha whatever you use the obviously the best (for you, but
|most > definitely not for most others who don't have as much free time
|on their > hands).
|
|David, you really ought to spend some of your precious time verifying 
|that what you're claiming has validity.  Complaining about the state of
|
|RPM based distros from over 7 years ago is ridiculous.  Then again,
|that  is Debian's release cycle.  :P

Caldera (as we remember it) didn't die that long ago, and _if_ these
problems have been fixed (at least one other post suggests that is not
the case), then it wasn't that long ago either.  Yes, the stable release
does get stale.  And I only recommend stable for customers who don't
care, just want a functional server and can't handle Linux at all.

Why don't you spend less time being so sensitive about your choice of
distro?  If it's so good, you shouldn't need to defend it so hard (or at
all). Or correct the post (not mine) that said he still has RPM
dependency problems and tell him it's his imagination.

All that said, I have neither the time nor desire to run 7 or 8 distros.
 The two I run is one too many, but Slack has a place in my heart
because it was my first (before there was a Red Hat or Debian).

Every distro has it's advantages and disadvantages.  Again, my mantra:
Linux is Linux is Linux (that even applies to those distros that heavily
patch or modify the kernel they use -- ugh -- in their distro).

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
		Nemesis Racing Team motto
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