On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 11:25:32 +1200 Roger Searle wrote: > The huge differences between windows and linux in terms of software > installations and upgrades is something that used to make my head spin - > still does - the ease with which I can do it in windows and the > difficulties (usually total failures) and mistakes I have previously had > in linux have made me really resistant to learning the ins and outs to > the point of not using anything that doesn't come on the install disks > (that much I can do).
It makes my head spin too, but in the opposite direction. I cannot fathom how to do the following things in windows, all of which I can easily do in rpm or portage based linuces: * find out when I installed various versions of a software package, and the exact version installed. * find out exactly what files were installed by package X * find out which package installed file Y * find out if any of the files installed by package X have been changed since installation. I recently ran ad-aware on my son's windows box. Ad-aware investigates every file on the hard drive looking for ad-ware & spyware. In doing so it triggers the virus checker, which discovered many infected files [1], as well as a vast quantity of ad/spy stuff. I cannot figure out what most of the directories under c:\program files\ are about, as there is no decent database of installed packages. I have no way of knowing whether an infected file was infected at the time it was installed, or has been subsequently changed. I also find that windows software writers have no coherent idea about where they put things. version one may be in c:\program files\usefulthing-v1 and version two will be in c:\program files\usefulsoft\usefulthing-vers2, and they will leave version one on the computer to confuse me about which binary I should use. Even if they delete version one the directory will remain full of crufty little files that are probably configuration files, but are not in plain text form so I would never know. And even if it managed to delete version one, the other half of version one's configuration data will be left deep in the registry, causing my system to slowly sink into the mire of an over full registry. And it will leave a now useless icon in the "Start" Menu. [1] the only heartening thing is that the fact that the virus checker didn't find them until then may imply that they have never actually been accessed before. > > It's time for me to get over myself and get on with it... Yes but I do invite caution about going outside your distro's offerings. SuSE uses rpm (as do RedRat, Mandrake, Connectiva, Fedora and others). RPM provides the system with a database which answers the problems I outlined above as well as dependencies, versioning and updating. Step outside that in a couple of minor packages and you will not have too many problems. Step outside it for major libararies or programs that affect other parts of the system and you run into problems. SuSE does offer one of the biggest selections of packaged stuff of any distro. I read an interesting article lately (Linux Journal) where the author maintained that if you go outside your distro's offereings you should look for a package specifically built for your distro, and if you cannot find one, prepare it yourself. In the case of an RPM thats a matter of writing a spec file and building a binary rpm from source. Then you can use it with rpm and maintain your system database. The author's point was that the easiest system that he had found for incorporating a package into a distro was currently provided by gentoo and its ebuild files. In other words he thought it was easier to write an ebuild than an rpm spec file. -- Nick Rout
