debian package management

[gabriel]

On April 19, 2004 01:51 pm, Mark Wadden wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Without sparking a religious war here, I'd like to know what people
> think of Debian's package upgrade process, compared to say Red Hat
> Network or SuSE's YaST/YOU.
>
> I've always been one to just reinstall for a major upgrade instead of
> attempting to merge versions (i.e. going from RH7.3 to 9.0) but hearing
> things like "You'll never have to reinstall again!" sounds promising.
> Question is, does it really hold up?  Does it leave a mess behind?

if you're interested, gentoo linux also has a great package-management system, 
sort of a cross between debian's apt-get and bsd's ports.  very stable, no 
re-installs etc.  and fun to play with.

the packages are community maintained (as opposed to rpms, which are mostly 
run by the host company) and are very updated which makes things good for 
desktops especially (kde3.2.2 came out today and the ebuilds are available 
today)

updates are as easy as "emerge sync && emerge --update world"  and the last 
major update (v1.2 to v1.4) was a complete changeover from gcc3.2 to gcc3.3 
-- a process handled by a simple howto and a few shell scripts.  you had to 
reboot though once you recompiled your new kernel.

-- 
there are no innocents. it is all of us together by action and inaction who 
made the world what it is.
	- mithras
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