An ex-Microsoft employee is arguing that Linux is ready for the primetime and that only thing keeping it away is the number of bugs it has. He claims that if these few high-importance bugs are fixed one way or another, Linux can become a dominant power in the desktop OS world.
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Member since:2005-10-17
Member since:2006-01-28
Member since:2005-07-09
Member since:2006-01-12
The package management centralization depends on the user, you can install a lot of software from binary or source packages and loose the track of it just as you can install "bad" windows software which does not provide a reliable uninstaller (that should be listed on the Add/Remove programs).
The strength of having package repositories is that you have so many software on it that most of the times you will not care of getting software from other (non centralized an properly managed) sources, this applies to both RPM and APT .
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-02-03
I use to think that every program I'd need was in the repository (I'm using Gentoo), but recently I've found myself running to more and more packages that aren't. Integration of third-party packages is important, imo, because you can't cover everything.
Right now, setting up an ebuild for Gentoo is a pain in the ass. I don't know how difficult it is for RPM/DEB based distros. The alternative is to have an unmanaged program on your system, which is certainly not preferred.
Member since:
2005-06-29
The current systems aren't as simple as double clicking an icon, fair enough. But frankly I've found the RPM package manager to be much better for the end user than anything I've seen on Windows. With RPM it's all managed from one program, it's consistent, it knows all the files installed and removes them all, and it's reliable. On Windows there is inconsistency as different installers don't adhere to standards, serveral files are left behind, sometimes you have to look for the uninstaller because it's not in the menu or in the "Add/Remove Programs" dialog, and sometimes the uninstallers crap out completely and remove almost nothing (which has happened to me too many times).
In the end it's my personal opinion that RPM is much cleaner, and not too difficult for users to learn.