On Monday of this week, more than 60 Ubuntu developers gathered in a hotel near Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport to plan Ubuntu's next release, codenamed Edgy Eft. The goal of the meeting is to set the goals for the upcoming release and to chart the set of steps that will be necessary to implement it.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Suse had a good solution with Yast2, but decided to adopt Zen Updater/Red Carpet with 10.1..
Updating with Yast2 wasn't ideal either.To little high avaibility update servers.Just look at the sheer amount of mirrors gentoo or ubuntu have.I mean a better package manager isn't going to change that.
Again, if a change is to be made, why not use community resources?
Yes,why not apt for example.Beter a good copy than a bad original.
Member since:2006-01-31
I have no problem with Apt, but it looks like support for it is decreasing. The two biggest apt users were Debian and Ubuntu, and it looks like Ubuntu is looking to make a change if the community response to Smart is positive. Apt4RPM is in the midst of change. A major RPM based distro needs to officially back Apt, but it looks like they are going their own way.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-06
Fedora is essentially starting from scratch to develop an enterprise ready solution for graphical packagemanagement for RHEL.
That's something I've gathered. Why are they doing this? Starting from scratch on yet another package management tool?! I despair. Surely this will severely affect the quality of RHEL? What Red Hat should be doing is using well known, ready made and community tested solutions, where bugs are well known and can be ironed out, rather than looking to the poor saps who beta and alpha test Fedora saying "There you are. There's a a new package management tool. Debug that for us so we can sell RHEL".
Suse had a good solution with Yast2, but decided to adopt Zen Updater/Red Carpet with 10.1. This lead to well documented problems. Again, if a change is to be made, why not use community resources? Novell will eventually get it right, but at the expense of the SLED 10 release date.
I really don't know why Novell took this decision. It took years to stabilise YaST's package management and graphical tools to the point that it caused very, very few problems. It will take them years again to stabilise this Zenworks thing at all, and given the other problems Novell has you would have thought that debugging a package management system would be the last thing on their minds. Just keep YaST or reuse Smart.
Alas, I fear that package management is fast becoming much more of a lock-in tool for vendors. Packages and repositories built specifically for completely different systems.....
Member since:
2006-01-31
Unified package management allows skeptical IT departments the piece of mind that they can administer their systems no matter which distribution they use.
Moreover, I think package management in Linux as a whole is weak. Apt set the standard for quality package management, but it is limited to .deb based distributions. Yes, Apt4RPM does exist, but it is in flux right now. The project maintainer left to work on Smart in March 2005. However, a new project leader was named in March 2006.
Since the break through of Apt, Red Hat and other RPM based distributions have gotten their act together, however some problems exist. Red Hat/Fedora Core improved yum, but did not have an officially supported GUI. Yumex works very well, but never got the blessing from Fedora. So, they are working on Pirut and Pup to be the graphical front end for yum. Fedora is essentially starting from scratch to develop an enterprise ready solution for graphical packagemanagement for RHEL. The idea that Red Hat/Fedora is not building off of the success of the Linux community (Smart or officially sanction Yumex) is a waste of their resources.
Suse had a good solution with Yast2, but decided to adopt Zen Updater/Red Carpet with 10.1. This lead to well documented problems. Again, if a change is to be made, why not use community resources? Novell will eventually get it right, but at the expense of the SLED 10 release date.
One could assume that Red Hat and Suse are going their own way because Smart is an inadequate solution, but that is not the case. Simply look Suse irc's or Suse forums and you will see the unofficial fix to the 10.1 package management debacle is Smart. Suse even included Smart on the 10.1 installation media (not included on 10.0).
Many people talk about the "Linux Community", but I don't see much of a community here. One of the rewards of Linux is the ability of many, many people/organizations working together to create a better alternative to traditional computer practices.
Smart may not be the best solution, but I am discouraged at the unwillingness of the Linux community to work together.