On Tue, 7 Oct 2008, Paul M Foster wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 11:22:49PM -0400, steve szmidt wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 07 October 2008, Eben King wrote:
>>
>>> I installed it with dpkg (no dependencies needed to be satisfied), but
>>> synaptic uninstalled it the next chance it had. So the only way of keeping
>>> it installed (maybe) would have been to use apt-get from then on.
>>
>> And that summarizes what is the worst with some packet managers.
>>
>> Once I decided to go with a 64 bit O/S I went through over 100 distro's
>> looking for something that would cover my points. I'm tired of tracking and
>> spending a lot of time maintaining the system and wanted to have less of
>> that.
>>
>> In the end I decided to go with Kubuntu. A fair amount of packets available,
>> does a pretty good job of keeping things working. But, there is TOO much
>> of "we know what's best for you" attitude and bypassing me. If it just said
>> something like We have found this to be the best choice what do you want?
>> Then I could agree or disagree.
>
> s/packet/package/g
>
> Yep, no package manager avoids this. If you really want to get your
> hands dirty, you can go for Linux From Scratch or Gentoo. But I'm not
> even sure that Gentoo avoids this. The worst of it is when they
> restructure a major package (like X Window) and rework all the
> dependencies. Then you can easily get a system wedged so that you have
> to uninstall a mass of packages and reinstall them from scratch to get
> the system working again.
I think my old system was wedged like that. Among those needing to be
uninstalled were dozens of interdependent packages including most of X. I
wasn't sure it would rebuild correctly and I couldn't afford to be without X
at that time. I also knew that with X going away (even temporarily) I'd
have to use something in which I'm only somewhat competent, so I just left
it unable to install pretty much anything. When I had time to spend a few
days with it "down" I did a whole-system upgrade (to Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit).
> Then there are the packages which have identically named files on disk,
> which interfere with each other's installation.
There's a dpkg fix for this, but I forget what it was. "--force-something"
probably. I found it by searching on the error message.
-- -eben QebWenE01R@vTerYizUonI.nOetP royalty.mine.nu:81 LIBRA: A big promotion is just around the corner for someone much more talented than you. Laughter is the very best medicine, remember that when your appendix bursts next week. -- Weird Al ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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