Re: [tlug] newbie notebook question

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "patrick" == patrick  <patrick@example.com> writes:

    patrick> it sounds like mandrake may be the best of a bad bunch.

Not really.  It's like a flowerpot: good support for the new shoots,
but tends to strangle growth after the initial spurt.  Also, the
Mandrake users tend to _all_ be newbies; the kind of "even the
journeyman wizards can consult the mages" support you get here on TLUG
is unusual in the Mandrake fora---and since none of the mages use
Mandrake, you're SOL if the Mandrake fora don't help.  Everything has
its tradeoffs.

That's not a reason to _avoid_ Mandrake.  You're _not_ "locked in" as
long as you maintain a disciplined structure for your data; you can
always move it to a new system that better fits your needs as you
grow.  One good way to achieve discipline is a regular backup regimen
(which is highly recommended for other reasons, eg Murphy and PEBKAC).

    patrick> Basically the whole rpm thing may have been "a good idea
    patrick> at the time", but it just doesn't scale, and that is why
    patrick> every rpm distro now has some horrible wrapper for
    patrick> downloading and dealing with dependencies.

Uh, you are aware that apt is just a "wrapper" around dpkg and
debconf?  As for "horrible", the latter two are an unholy lashup of C
drivers and Perl scripts of which Simon Cozens said, "it's those
things that give Perl a bad name".

    patrick>  They all have different names and work with different
    patrick> flags. I am flat out with "emerge" and "apt" to get
    patrick> involved with "yum", "urmpi" and whatever suse might use.

But then there's Fink (yet another dpkg wrapper for the Mac) and
DarwinPorts (a serious competitor to emerge, although it's mostly used
on the Mac at the moment).

So I just don't see the Installer Wars ending any time soon.

    patrick> in the end as long as you are not using that other OS you
    patrick> are miles ahead of the game.

Now that is a true statement.  I found out about CALs yesterday
... I'd never heard of them before.  What a blissful existence!
 

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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              ask what your business can "do for" free software.