Offer Kaye wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:27:56 +0200, Oded Arbel wrote:I did the math and your calculation is wrong. There are at least two X server implementations, and there are numerous versions of each. For each X server you deploy there are several drivers and extensions that can be deployed. Its not legitimate to expect each window manager maker to create a configuration tool that knows all the tricks and shticks for each possible configuration and auto-detect which is which - the number of possible configurations is mind boggling. The window manager make can't tell in advance on which platform you are going to deploy it. Some are even do not require X11 (kde-win32, gtk-DirectFB).
There are over 300 distributions listed on distrowatch.com .or worse: every window manager maker would have to include their own configuration tool.
There are about 5 or 10 (give or take a few) popular Window Managers,
with only 2 really big ones.
You do the math. Seems to me it would be *better*, not worse, if every
WM included its own desktop configuration tool, instead of the
distributions themselves doing so.
The distro maker knows which version of what product it is shipping and with which extensions drivers (and don't get me started on distro specific patches) and has all the information required to setup a configuration tool - in effect all serious distro vendors (even non-commercial ones such as Debian and Yoper) offer their own specialized configuration tool which integrates (at least in look and feel) with all other system specific configuration tool.
I could also mention commercial X servers that have a completly different configuration system, or remote X - do you really expect the X client to configure your server remotly ?
In fact it makes no sense to have the X configuration UI provided by the WM vendor while it makes every sense to have it provided by the distro vendor: same as for any system level configuration from run-levels to web server.
Yes, easily. I have alien install on my system and I have yet to use it once. I'm constantly checking out new software and almost every time I can find it in Mandrake's repository (which is huge - currently standing at just over 7GB just for the free version) or one of the other repositories such as PLF or Texstar's PC-Linux-OS. In some cases I have to go to the software home page and download an RPM from there. In all my time using Linux I think I saw one software that had DEB packages only.I used Mandrake from version 8.0 all the way to 10.1, at which point I switched to Mepis. Mandrake's configuration tools, including rpmdrake, kick-ass. I totally agree there. But can you really compare the wealth of packages offered by apt to those offered by rpm?
OTOH a lot of software vendors offer RPM versions only - for example I've recently installed Skype which only offers RPMs and tarballs.
After making theFrom my experience, if you don't need the advanced features of apt, especially automatic source build, then urpmi is a better tool. Specificly regarding the current topic - I still consider software that does not offer UI for configuration or at least a decent command line tool, and forces you to edit configuration files by hand, to be inferior :-)
switch, I can say, at least based on my personal experience, that
using an apt based distribution is simply better, hands down.
-- Oded
::.. Excuses are the easiest things to manufacture, and the hardest things to sell.
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