Packaging systems (was: What about post-installfest support?)

[Craig Routledge]

> Walter Dnes wrote:
> > What's the Suse or Fedora or Debian equivalant of saying
> > "emerge mplayer"?

On 05/09/2005 11:24:38 AM, Andrew Hammond wrote:
> With both SuSE and Fedora, you'd probably install it initially. Debian
> uses apt, which is similar in functionality to emerge.

Just because I see this getting asked all the time....

rpm is to deb as yum is to apt, so:

   yum install package-name

works on Fedora and resolves all dependencies.  There are also graphical  
front-ends, although I haven't used them myself.

RPM is not an apt equivalent, and it isn't supposed to act at that level.   
So comparing the two just causes confusion and isn't relevant.

The big gotcha on Fedora, is that some packages such as mplayer are not  
included for legal reasons.  (Similar to debian non-free)  Packages in  
these grey areas can be found on repositories such as freshrpms, DAG, and  
the like.

> > How many people with Suse or Fedora or Debian have managed to get
> > mplayer running?

Raises hand.  Although on slower machines, I have compiled from source to  
try and optimize mplayer.  My current machine is no speed demon, but is  
fast enough that I just use the binary packages.

Of course, I would not recommend a non-techie new user compile from source  
unless using a system like emerge.  But then, performance for most common  
applications (mail, web browsing, word processing) is constrained by disk  
and other I/O, not CPU.  So compiling for CPU optimization isn't a  
noticable gain in many cases.




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