Mostly from people who are trying to install stuff without using their distro's package management system or who haven't configured access to the necessary software repositories yet. If you use your distros package management system, wether it be urpmi, yum, yast or whatever; you won't get depedency hell with RPMs just like if you slackware users stick to slackware packages you will be fine too. If you use RPM without {yum, upmi, yast, apt-rpm, ...} to install stuff then of course you're likely to get dependency problems, just as if you used dpkg without apt.

Actually, you can. Try upgrading to the latest Evolution build posted on Suse's supplementary branch.

I don't have Suse so I can't try it but if there's a problem then that's Suse's fault for not packaging it right. You could just as easily create a DEB package of Evolution with bad dependencies if you didn't do it right.

So do I use my machine... the point is, when I want something new, I don't spend half an hour installing the dependencies, I just install it and get it over with.

Let me just give a simple example. On Slackware, I once installed firestarter. It took me forty minutes just to hunt up the dependencies and install them. That's just for one app.

In Debian it took me just a few minutes and minimum user interaction... I could actually start using my machine rather than hunt up dependencies.

I think you misunderstood my post. I do install a lot of packages, but that's because it takes such a short time in Debian as compared to Slackware. And I can leave it running in the background and continue with my regular tasks.

This I can do in Gentoo too. That's why I use Gentoo and Debian regularly.

The point is that I *am* able to install/upgrade on a regular basis and yet have plenty of time to *do* what I want rather than spend that time like you do in Slackware by searching, installing and configuring dependencies and settings.

No matter how you justify it, installing any third party software or unofficial package in Slackware *is* a slow and painful process for *most* of us...

Exactly. The fact that having a package management system alone doesn't resolve dependency hell problems automagically remains. Even apt-get or yum won't resolve all packages in all cases, and of course that's due to improper packaging or not having the proper packages present on the installation source.

From reading many posts before my question might start some kind of war which I hope it doesn't. Why is their no package management standard across all distributions? Their is already good package management sollutions, just have the heads of each distribution decide on a standard like RPM, the one Gentoo uses, or some other and just use it.

Because as you can see from this thread, everybody has their own ideas of which package management is the best (or even the lack of one)... and each user has his own needs: Linux, being Free (as in Freedom), caters to all needs...

Besides distros are not necessarily in co-operation. They are also in competition with one another in many ways...

Does that answer you question?

Yes thank you.

Distro's should co-operate with one another more. Its like Linux VS Windows, within Linux you have "mini compititions" like one distro VS another. These internal fights are not healthy to Linux development.

Why not? RedHat is a company that is in competition with Suse and Mandriva and so on. Each company has to fight for the market share. I don't see why they *should* co-operate with one another although they might in some situations...

While what you say is right in an ideal world, competition in a free market is actually healthy for Linux development...

You should realize that that's one of the spirits of Open Source: both co-operation and healthy competition are essential for the development of Linux. I heard Brian Behlendorf (Apache Founder) in person at a seminar and he gave an excellent presentation on this: why competition is not only good for Open Source, but also inevitable because of the very nature of the licensing...

Competition is good and that's one reason I believe why Linux has developed so much.

Free and fair competition is almost always healthy. Its exactly the lack of this that has caused so many problems in the Windows world - ie. Microsoft has little incentive to truly innovate or fix the underlying problems in their OS (eg. security) because there is no competition in the desktop market. Not to mention probably the worst effect of this - they can effectively charge whatever price they want and get away with it, and they've exploited this to the max.

By contrast in the far more competitive world of Linux the OS and apps improve by leaps and bounds every year. Compare Linux on the desktop 5 years ago to now - the difference is incredible. Now compare Windows XP and Office 2003 with Windows 2000 and Office 2000 - there almost interchangeable. If you turn off Windows XP's 'teletubbies' interface it could almost be mistaken for Windows 2000. And Office 2003 hasn't offered any major new features, just incremental improvements. Its stagnation - a sure sign of an unhealthy monopoly.

Do you watch teletubbies too? I like to watch teletubbies...

Because the price of freedom is eternal incompatibilities and confusion.

No but I do like to have XP in teletubbies mode when I use it, maybe I should start watching the show too

There was a reply stating that "why can't the hardware manufacturer make drivers for linux?"-Simple-there is no market for it! And you can't have a market if the users are turned off by the fact that there is no support for the hardware from the manufacturer.
A catch 22 situation!
So what are the remedies/suggestions?

If you investigate closely, I think you will find that hardware manufacturers do, indeed support Linux. Whether or not you'll find a Linux driver installation disk in an off-the-shelf consumer-grade product in Best Buy, I don't know. Whether you'll find the installation to be easy for you, I don't know either.

But the general statement made above, I find to simply be "a truism." Sounds plausible, sounds true, but when you kick the tires a bit you find it's really not true at all.

My experience with Linux (and Macintosh OS/X, nee BSD Unix) has been that most devices I could care to plug into it are already supported. Configuring a new device, let alone optimally, does take some doing.