[geeks] Solaris 9/x86 Performance

[Kurt Huhn]

Frank Van Damme <frank.vandamme at student.kuleuven.ac.be> wrote:
> > There are minor differences between the various linux distributions
> > that make people prefer one over the other, but As Far As I Know,
> > nobody LOVES RPM enough to choose Red Hat just for it.
> 
> Since there are about 30 other distributions who use rpm? It's a reason to
> not recommend slackware to anyone starting linux for instance.
> 

Ah, the holy war begins :)

"My distribution is better!  Your's sucks because [fill in this blank]"

> and while you may have a bad experience, my package system is one of the
> few things I didn't screw up yet. I cannot recall ever having suffered
> from bugs in those programs (having used Mandrake, which is rpm-based, and
> debian for nearly 3 years now).

I suffer daily.  Every piece of commercial software in an RPM package, that
fails with "/bin/sh not installed" makes me want to shoot myself in the face
with a signal cannon.  DB2 comes to mind.

> 
> You can't go without a package manager, how crappy even. Compiling
> everything by hand (=not with ports or anything) could make a fulltime
> job. Not to

Not so, really.  If you know what you're doing.  Just get the base system
installed with anything you need to compile, all the tarballs you need, and
compile away.  The first time or two will be tedious, but once you've got it
figured out it goes very quickly.  The obvious qualifier of "not for
inexperienced, impatient, or easily frustrated people" goes here...

-- 
Kurt
kurt at k-huhn.com