[wplug] SLES 9.0 questions

Michael A. Smith michael at smith-li.com
Mon Oct 25 15:44:33 EDT 2004


I guess what you're talking about is package management, the art of 
getting the latest/safest/best software on your linux box without 
breaking it.

Package management is the Holy Grail of open source BSD and Linux, and 
in my opinion is a sound explanation why people switch to the so-called 
"harder" distributions, such as Gentoo, Debian, or one of the BSDs.

I never much liked RPM'd distributions, because finding RPMs and making 
sure they were up-to-date was too much trouble, especially when you take 
dependencies into account.

The two best distributions for their package management are probably 
Gentoo (source based), and Debian (binary). Gentoo is one of those 
distributions that scares people away because of its supposedly long 
learning curve, and occasionally, some of its users, but I can tell you 
that its package management is second to none. Considering the level of 
control that you can, but don't have to, assert, Gentoo is a very hard 
distro to switch away from once you've gotten used to it. I've also 
heard of Portage, Gentoo's package management system, on OS X, Cygwin, 
and OpenBSD.

Debian's apt-get package management is nice, although heavier on the 
dependencies than Gentoo, but being a binary distribution means install 
times are shorter, anyway. Unlike Gentoo, Debian has lots and lots of 
offshoot distributions, like Ubuntu and Knoppix, which differ from 
Debian in some ways, but use the same package management tools, if I 
recall correctly. Debian's package management system is called APT.

In fact, SuSE has even gotten on the APT boat now, which is really nice 
if you're using SuSE and don't want to change distros: 
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/home.html

Hope it helps,
Michael A. Smith

Pecoraro, Chris wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>I'm a linux newbie, so forgive my silly questions.  We have SLES 9.0 on opteron dual 246 (SMP) (750 gig ATA, 8 gig ram) without the maintenance, and it's becoming almost impossible to keep up with the latest rpms.  Can I really maintain this server without a YAST or subscription, or am I kidding myself.  I can't even install Gimp or Firefox because I'm already missing newer libs! 
>
>Thanks in advance guys/girls
>
>Chris Pecoraro
>Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh
>
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