Adam Williamson wrote: > On Tue, 2003-02-11 at 11:49, Buchan Milne wrote: > > >>The big arguments against linux for home use are that software >>installation is too difficult. We can counter that, and say that it's >>just as easy. Download an rpm, double-click on it, and if you know the >>root password, you can install it. > > > I'm not convinced we ought to be encouraging people to do this. > > More than half the whining about how crap RPM is as a packaging system > is down to people misusing it, and the major form of misuse is the > installation of inappropriate RPMs. Way too many people download, for > e.g., Red Hat RPMs and try to install them on Mandrake, assuming that > this is right. It's not.
Sure, but what about 1 rpm from Club? What about one RPM (say fonts) from Ben's site. What about 1 rpm from PLF. Does the user need to learn to use urpmi for it? And (since most people only show the hdlist version) download a 1MB hdlist for a 200kB RPM? What if I make up an RPM for someone and send it to them? Making kpackage the default doesn't help matters, as they can install it there too. At least with gurpmi they will get dependencies. There is no way to stop people installing weird RPMs on their box besides education, and many people do it with rpm anyway, since they're clueless ex-RH users. IMHO, there is no reason kpackage should be the default over gurpmi. Buchan -- |--------------Another happy Mandrake Club member--------------| Buchan Milne Mechanical Engineer, Network Manager Cellphone * Work +27 82 472 2231 * +27 21 8828820x121 Stellenbosch Automotive Engineering http://www.cae.co.za GPG Key http://ranger.dnsalias.com/bgmilne.asc 1024D/60D204A7 2919 E232 5610 A038 87B1 72D6 AC92 BA50 60D2 04A7
