Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Thu 22nd Feb 2007 23:24 UTC, submitted by Andrzej Ptak
There are currently at least five popular ways of installing software in GNU/Linux. None of them are widely accepted throughout the popular distributions. This situation is not a problem for experienced users - they can make decisions for themselves. However, for a newcomer in the GNU/Linux world, installing new software is always pretty confusing. The article tries to sum up some of the recent efforts to fix this problem and examine the possible future of packaging software in GNU/Linux.
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Member since:
2005-07-10
daemonologist,
Re: "What if the software is not available for my distro?"
This is a real concern. By having various packaging methods that are not supported by all Linux distributions can make it difficult for third parties to supply binary software, drivers, etc. For example in the post-production film/television industry the Linux standard has always been RPM (ie: RHEL,SLED). The reason for this is Red Hat Linux was first used by studios on standard PC systems to lower cost over using SGI Irix workstations. That change caused commercial software developers like Alias (bought by Autodesk), Discreet (also bought by Autodesk), Softimage, etc to port their software to Linux compiled for RPM installation. These companies used by such studios do not support or offer binary packages for their commercial software to be used on Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu and Linspire.
Re: "The amount of software available for RHEL (RedHat Enterprise) (or any of RHEL based distros) is ridiculously low."
Can you clarify what software you need that is available on a Debian based distribution that is not available for RHEL/Fedora Linux users?