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On Monday 10 February 2003 01:32, Kevin Anderson wrote:
> RPMs are a Red Hat package, so why would SUSE support it?  Same with
> Debian's DEBs, or Gentoo's Emerge scripts.  These things are what
> differentiates the various distributions.  If you want to end up with
> Mandrake, you need to install from Mandrake disks.

just to clarify for those less familiar w/Linux, RPM is *NOT* Red Hat 
specific. RPM is part of the Linux Standards Base (LSB) and describes a 
package management file format. RPM debuted on Red Hat (though even it was 
based on prior work) but is today used by SuSe, Mandrake, SCO (previously 
Caldera), Connectiva, Lycoris, Lindows, Ark, Kondara .. (shall i go on? =) 

for systems like Debian, you can use package converters like Alien to install 
RPMs...

given the same toolchain and file system layout, packages are installable 
cross platform. those who have installed Red Hat rpms on Mandrake systems and 
vice versa can attest to that.

that's largely the point and goal of the LSB

> differentiate themselves.  Red Hat can brag they they're easy to use
> because you just download the RPMs, and type rpm -i package.  Deb/Gentoo

rpm -U ... rpm -i only for things like kernels which you don't upgrade by 
overwriting the binaries... and Red Hat can't brag about being user friendly 
re: downloading rpms because they've fallen behind every other modern 
distribution when it comes to package delivery (YAST, urpm*, apt-get...)

> will say heck, why bother wasting time searching for, and then downloading
> them. Just type apt-get/emerge package.  But if you ignore the package

please don't confuse package file formats with package delivery systems. the 
two work together to solve completeley different aspects of the software 
maintenance challenge.

> And you can compile on one machine for another.  So if your Caldera box is
> a 486/66, and your Sorceror box is an Athlon 3000+, then you can use the
> Sorceror box to compile the packages on the Caldera box.  No, Sorceror
> probably won't build you an easily installable package, but it can compile
> from source in exactly the same manner as it would happen on the Caldera
> box (plus some extra steps to chroot, and stuff.).  These aren't

given enough effort (you'd have to ensure a compatible toolchain and package 
management solution used for the build in question) it is completely possible 
to build such packages. of course, it's often easier to simply build it on 
the target system rather than create a complex build environment =)

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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