Re: [tlug] Long-term Stability Distros (was: Flash and Firexfox 2)

[Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>]

2009/3/13 Daniel A. Ramaley <daniel.ramaley@example.com>:

> I changed to Debian for exactly the same reasons you are describing.
> Well, that and dependency Hell. I've heard that dependency Hell doesn't
> happen anymore on Red Hat based distros,

As long as there are dependencies, there will be Dependency Hell. The
real question is, does your distro give you tools for dealing with it?
I find Debian / Ubuntu just as frustrating as Red Hat (and other
RPM-based distros). Gentoo and other source-based distros do a better
job, simply because they give you compile-time control over what
dependencies you choose to accept, as long as the source builds
themselves have reasonable configuration scripts.

The best way to handle this is:

1. For your desktop environment, use the native package system
2. For any service you are developing, use a deployment manager like
QAM to handle all the dependencies

This stuff ain't easy, and there's a reason that Steve and I feel that
a book needs to be written on how to deal with dependencies (though we
would be focusing on the development side).

-- 
Cheers,
Josh