svlug-some_debian_criticism_and_responses

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Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 15:49:58 -0800
From: bill@wards.net (William R. Ward)
To: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>
Cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] How To Automate Netscape -was- search domain 

J C Lawrence writes:
>On 28 Nov 2001 12:57:12 -0800 
>William R Ward <William> wrote:
>> J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu> writes:
>
>>> Its not unstable for me.  My average runtime for Galeon is
>>> slightly over 30 days (which is about how often I upgrade).
>>> Note: I'm using the default Debian packages.
>
>> Is there any way to install Galeon using the Debian packages
>> without upgrading to testing?  
>
>--force-depends?

Risky... but maybe.

>> I'm running potato and am waiting until the next stable release
>> before upgrading, since the machine also acts as a server.
>
>Most of my servers are running /testing.  Its been no trouble.

I gather they're pretty close to freezing it and releasing it as a new
/stable version.  I suppose it would be OK to upgrade.

My one gripe with Debian is that unless you run the risks of running
everything in the unstable branch, you're unable to use the latest
versions of the one or two packages that you really want to upgrade.
Otherwise, it's great.

===

Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 19:32:09 -0500
From: Bill Jonas <bill@billjonas.com>
To: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] How To Automate Netscape -was- search domain


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On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 03:49:58PM -0800, William R. Ward wrote:
> My one gripe with Debian is that unless you run the risks of running
> everything in the unstable branch, you're unable to use the latest
> versions of the one or two packages that you really want to upgrade.
> Otherwise, it's great.

apt-get -b source ... ?

===

From: William R Ward <bill@wards.net>
Date: 29 Nov 2001 14:33:36 -0800

Bill Jonas <bill@billjonas.com> writes:

> On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 03:49:58PM -0800, William R. Ward wrote:
> > My one gripe with Debian is that unless you run the risks of running
> > everything in the unstable branch, you're unable to use the latest
> > versions of the one or two packages that you really want to upgrade.
> > Otherwise, it's great.
> 
> apt-get -b source ... ?

Well, I tried that and found that Galeon requires a newer version of
glib than I have.  Even with source it is still too far behind the
curve.


===

Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:46:23 -0800
From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 15:49:58 -0800 
William R Ward <bill@wards.net> wrote:

> My one gripe with Debian is that unless you run the risks of
> running everything in the unstable branch, you're unable to use
> the latest versions of the one or two packages that you really
> want to upgrade.  Otherwise, it's great.

Yup, I do that frequently.  I'll re-write /etc/apt/sources.list to
point at unstable, update/install a particular package, and then
drop it back to /testing.

Actually I do this via comments.  My current file looks something
the below, so toggling back and forth is just a question of touching
the first comments:

--<cut>--

# Debian sources

#deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
#deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ unstable non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free
#deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ testing non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ woody main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ woody non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ woody main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ potato main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/ potato non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ potato main contrib non-free

# Unofficial debs

# Aptitude is a new APT frontend which aims to test the limits of what an
# APT frontend can do.

deb http://aptitude.sourceforge.net/debian ./
deb-src http://aptitude.sourceforge.net/debian ./

# Joey Hess' stuff 

deb http://kitenet.net/programs/code/debian /
--<cut>--

===

Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:54:16 -0800
From: bill@wards.net (William R. Ward)
To: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>
Cc: bill@wards.net (William R. Ward), svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] How To Automate Netscape -was- search domain 

J C Lawrence writes:
>On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 15:49:58 -0800 
>William R Ward <bill@wards.net> wrote:
>
>> My one gripe with Debian is that unless you run the risks of
>> running everything in the unstable branch, you're unable to use
>> the latest versions of the one or two packages that you really
>> want to upgrade.  Otherwise, it's great.
>
>Yup, I do that frequently.  I'll re-write /etc/apt/sources.list to
>point at unstable, update/install a particular package, and then
>drop it back to /testing.

That works OK with testing and unstable, since they're fairly close.
But stable is so far behind that major changes in things like libc
make those kinds of upgrades basically impossible.

But thanks for the sources.list; I may be able to crib some stuff
from that.


===

Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 18:54:18 -0800
From: Marc MERLIN <marc_news@valinux.com>
To: "William R. Ward" <bill@wards.net>
Cc: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>, svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Debian testing / unstable

On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 03:49:58PM -0800, William R. Ward wrote:
> My one gripe with Debian is that unless you run the risks of running
> everything in the unstable branch, you're unable to use the latest
> versions of the one or two packages that you really want to upgrade.
> Otherwise, it's great.

Not really, you do have testing.

That said, if  you are glibc compatible (potato isn't  glibc compatible with
woody, but that's not debian's fault, RH 7.x packages don't run on RH 6.x)),
you can install packages from unstable into your debian distro.

This is all a glibc issue, not a debian issue.
With RH, they once  again broke compatibility in RPM, so  RH 7 package can't
even  be manipulated  with RH  6.x  (unless you  get a  special patched  RPM
package)


===

Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 12:25:46 -0800
From: Rafael Skodlar <raffi@linwin.com>
To: Nate Campi <nate@wired.com>
Cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Debian testing / unstable

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 07:31:30AM -0800, Nate Campi wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 12:01:46AM -0800, Drew Bertola wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 06:54:18PM -0800, Marc MERLIN wrote:
> > > With RH, they once  again broke compatibility in RPM, so  RH 7 package can't
> > > even  be manipulated  with RH  6.x  (unless you  get a  special patched  RPM
> > > package)
> > 
> > Yeah, like you've got to walk to Durham and cut them a check for the
> > RPM?  If that's a gripe, I don't get it.
> 
> The cost of software in dollar terms often means little to a sysadmin.
> My company readily pays out huge sums of money for software it deems
> useful.
> 
> The thing is, I don't care of how much they spend on iPlanet or IIS,
> Apache is always easier to administer (reliability, flexibility, easy to
> edit text files, etc). Whether or not we paid for it is meaningless,
> it's the cost as far as maintaining it that bothers Marc.
> 
> Money isn't everything ;)

A lot of money makes a difference in everything ;-)

One thing is important to keep in mind that RedHat is "the defacto Linux
standard" [1] to management and many marketing people.

[1] that's not necessarily GNU/Linux standard. You may strongly disagree 
with me but the reality (the way I see it) is such. When you develop 
software for Linux platform, the first one they ask you to support is 
RedHat. I have yet to hear one sales guy come to me and say we need 
Debian. And that's a reflection from what they hear from (potential) 
customers.

And what's IBM [1] supporting? A product from a corporation that has a
proven business record not proven packaging software. It's good we always
look for something better and as long as we have alternatives to MS
proprietary products I'll be happy.

[2] That's not to be ignored you know.

By the way, I was told on many occassions that Debian is THE ANSWER.  
However, my experience was somewhat disappointing. Unless you are careful
you can shot yourself in any part of the body much faster with Debian than
RedHat. I also see no reason to run cron job to update my server with some
(trusted?) code from the net as some have suggested.

Patches and security are better done manualy IMO. Just the idea of
installing someting from "unstable" tree makes me feel uneasy. That's just
for the OS part of code. Applications and other utilities are better done
some other way so that they fit on any distribution regardless of
packaging. It's not easy to keep track of packages for different
distributions on top of different versions. If nothing else it takes a lot
of disk space on central server.

===

Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:28:44 -0800
From: Marc MERLIN <marc_news@valinux.com>
To: R P Herrold <herrold@owlriver.com>
Cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Debian testing / unstable

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 07:19:54PM -0500, R P Herrold wrote:
> hunh? "impossible"?  Your memory is flogging the wrong horse.
 
Ok.
 
> RH 7.0 issued 9/25/00
>   http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2000/press_rhl7.html
> 
> Package type 4 (the RH 7.0 format, [before addition of  a 
> backwards compatability mode] was introduced in rpm-3.0.4
> 
> I was reporting issues against RPM 3.0.5 on  2000-06-23 at:
>     https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12876
> (rpm-3.0._5_ STILL 70 days before RH 7.0 release)
> 
> rpm-3.0.4, with a -6x variant issued  Mar 16 2000
>     ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/dist/rpm-3.0.x/
> (rpm-3.0.5 on Jul 21 2000, rpm-3.0.6 on Sep 14 2000 [as did 
> rpm-4.0.1] -- still 11 days before RH 7.0 released)

I must suck because I really looked for it, and sure didn't find it.
I can assure you that I sure wasn't  the only one having a hard time finding
an glibc 2.1 rpm v3 package back then.
(but it might have to do with the  fact that most of us where indeed looking
for an rpm-4.x.x  package, and that there  didn't seem to be  an obvious FAQ
entry on this on the RH site)

> You are confusing packaging format version 4 and rpm-4.x.x -- 
> like confusing lightning and lightning bugs. -- Similar names; 

I stand corrected. I did indeed think that version 4 of the format appeared
in rpm 4.x. Would have been too logical :-)

Obviously, since you  follow RPM development, you know all  this much better
than I do.
I'm sure there's also a really good reason why they've had to break backward
compatiblity 3 (or was it 4?) times when debian never had to.

If you  design your format with  a little forsight, you  leave extra fields,
and allow  for extension while  keeping backward compatiblity (see  IPV4 and
TCP, especially TCP extensions, or look at ext2)

I'm sorry, but it's  plain lame that a v4 package that  may not even contain
binaries (config or perl) is uninstallable with a v3 rpm binary.

> As I recall  it, the "real pain in  the ass" was people unable  to RTFM in
> the release notes, the RPM mailing list, of the RPM errata notice, EACH of
> which outlined  the steps -- and  yet insisting on forcing  their systems,
> with --nodeps and --force's into  unstable states; and then loudly blaming
> Red Hat.
 
Agreed. I don't do that myself, or if I do, I don't complain.
(I've half upgraded to RH 7.0 by hand from the command line)
 
Marc

PS: I have to  admit that I was  actually impressed that the  RH 7.2 install
was able  to figure out the  state my system  was in and installed  a mostly
working 7.2 system.

===

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