On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 08:40:43PM +1100, leatherbear wrote:
> I`m still in the newbie stage of Linux. I`ve got my system up and
> running, the internets OK and all the progs on my supplied disks,
> which is Redhat 6.2 load nicely through Kpackage, the Redhat RPM prog
> ( I think ). But what about all the other RPM progs out there. Maybe I
> havn`t grasped something, but are these programs meant to be
> interchangable between different distributions or.....are they meant
> to be used by the Distribution they might have come with. I have the
> problem that some progs won`t load, others appear to load but don`t
> run, and others ( the simpler ones ) seem OK. Any help would be much
> appreciated.
You are possibly confusing two different items here. Firstly there are
the rpms themelves. These are packages containing either the source or
binary code for various programs. Due to slight differences in things
like the directory layouts or specific library versions for different
distributions (e.g. Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSe, ...), some rpms which are
built for one distribution will not instill and run correctly on another
distribution.
The second thing (which you seem to be asking about) are applications
which present a nice friendly user interface to the rpm program itself.
To many newcomers (and not-so-new ones as well), the myriad of options
that you can -- and sometimes must -- pass to rpm to install or build a
package can be overwhelming. So programs like Kpackage (which I'm
guessing runs under KDE) and gnorpm (for Gnome) try to present a more
intuitive interface. Ultimately, all of these programs call rpm, or its
underlying libraries, so they can be interchanged at will.
Does this help? Or does it just poor soothing oil on the flames of
confusion?
Malcolm
--
Malcolm Tredinnick email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CommSecure Pty Ltd
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