Peter B. Steiger wrote: *snip*
Now, to be fair... (devils advocate mode on) > There's no package management so whenever I ran apt-get I had no idea > what it installed or where it put things. If I changed my mind about > something and ran apt-get uninstall, it would only uninstall the one > package I named and none of the 64 dependencies that went with it. Apt-get is the package management, and it's considered one of the best. It's much more reliable than RPM at the very least, and if the software you want to use is missing some dependencies, it will let you know and offer to get them, unlike RPM which just throws an error and makes you hunt them down yourself. As for the removal of software, you have run into one of the 'shortcomings' of a package-based system. To run a given program that needs other parts, apt-get will get them and install them. However, removing that package removes only the software you asked it to. Since multiple programs might need the same parts, it's not going to remove them all automagically. Apt-get can tell you what one piece of software needs to install, but AFAIK, it's not designed to know what else on the system needs a given library or program. So to keep from breaking other things, it removes only what you tell it to, unless what you want to remove is a dependency for something else, in which case, I believe it asks if you want to continue as it's going to remove what you asked it to as well as the stuff that depends on the target. > I need to forward ipsec packets to my work machine so I can connect to > my employer's VPN server, but the kernel is not compiled with ipsec > forwarding. Right, it's a server, not a firewall. > At that point I gave up on apt-get and used fpt to fetch a new kernel > source... only to find that I can't build anything because the kernel > headers aren't installed. I ran apt-get install > kernel-something-or-other-headers and it didn't put them > in /usr/include; it put them in /usr/src where I have to run make - but > make won't install the kernel headers because it won't run without the > kernel headers installed! That is another reason why I vastly prefer LFS... I control and know where everything is placed. Yes, debian/ubuntu is /very/ good at documenting where the packages place everything, but it's annoying to have to look it up every time they deviate from the accepted standard. Packages as a whole bug me to no end. Gentoo isn't any better. Building from source isn't going to give much of a performance boost, if any, unless one is running stuff like huge databases or real-time software where every millisecond counts. I run LFS because I know exactly what goes on the drive and I can build it as fat or thin as I want. I just wish it was easier to build a base LFS install that wasn't so closely tied to the machine it was originally built on. I would use a disk image of it for all my machines (I have one tarred up for VMWare use on the house file server). > Next weekend, I wipe out the ubuntu partitions and start fresh with LFS. > I learned my lesson. Personally, it sounds more like you didn't quite understand what the distro was designed for and how it installs software. I'm not trying to be insulting, I ran into this one as well when I tried the server install of ubuntu in a VM, I hated it. I was annoyed at how it did stuff and thought it was a moronic install. Then I thought about it and what the installed is designed for, and it made sense. A "server" isn't going to have NAT/PAT functions installed on it, those belong on a "firewall" host. Nor would a "dedicated server" have a full set of tools for compiling, it's considered a security issue. It all depends on what the aim and purpose of the install is. This doesn't mean that I like it or want to run it ;-), but I understand most of the design choices. For the record, I've tried two ubuntu installs on a laptop.... neither one lasted more than a day before I reimaged the drive from my LFS backup. Unfortunately, it's 6.0 based, so it's due for a rebuild. I'm thinking the latest SVN. Anyone have any comments on that build? -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
