On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 05:01:55AM +0000, Shevek wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, David Cantrell wrote:
>
> > rely on RPMs. The real reason I haven't switched is because it's really
> > *nasty* trying to switch from one distro to another without a) losing
> > valuable config data and b) ending up with a ton of unused junk on the disk
> > which is nigh-on impossible to tell apart from stuff that's in use.
>
> I had always committed to the nature of Unix being that one does end up
> with a pile of stuff on disk which one doesn't use. The point is that this
> doesn't matter. Unless you're upgrading something every day or every week,
> the junk pile-up on a production server won't do much more than double or
> treble the hard disk usage of the OS, which will be small compared to the
> user data, and is still in a small order of magnitude.
Whilst this may be OK on servers, it ain't OK on desktops or even worse,
laptops. And yes, I am upgrading something several times a week. When
there's new security alerts, for instance. This is essential if you are
permanently online.
And on my personal server, disk space is very much at a premium. There,
the OS + programs is only *one* order of magnitude less than the user
data, and even if remains an order of magnitude less, it will soon bump
up against having filled the stuff-other-than-user-data disk.
Even the Mighty Debian suffers in this regard. Can anyone here enlighten
us as to whether the BSD systems are any better at keeping themselves
tidy?
--
David Cantrell | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced
