LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Christopher Yeoh <cyeoh@samba.org>
  To  : Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 18:32:07 +1100

Re: Any Questions to Red Hat, Mandrake You'd Like To Ask?

Glen Turner writes:
> 
>  - contributions.  The contrib software is a good idea,
>    but updates aren't being accepted.  Result is that
>    common packages like zoo are still being distributed
>    with security problems and many packages haven't
>    tracked the FSSTND.

Eeek! Its the FHS now :-)

>  - packaging.  Red Hat really needs to pressure commerical
>    software companies to ship in RPM format.  More and
>    more we are seeing Windows-like installers.  These
>    suck for corporates, and are part of the nightmare that
>    makes maintaining Windows machines so expensive.  How
>    about a cost-free logo program that says that this
>    third-party software follows the Linux standards,
>    Unix practice, and is in RPM format.

The LSB is pushing this sort of line. The packaging format is RPM
(though the v3 format). There will also be a certification/branding
processes available for recognition of LSB compliant apps and
distributions.

Package management under Linux does need improvement which might
explain why people are using custom installers - for example AFAIK
incremental upgrades (as in upgrade only a small subset of files of a
package) isn't supported.

Chris.
-- 
cyeoh@au.ibm.com
IBM OzLabs Linux Development Group
Canberra, Australia

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