RPM users: Why do you use RPM distros (RH, Suse, Fedora)
 

Ok, First I am going to say that I dont want to start a flameware- I just want honest opinions.

It seems to me that RPM package menagement is way behind the technology of apt, portage, and most other package management tools.

All you Red Hat based distro users, Why do you use RPM based distros?


Is it because you like the package management, or because you like the distro itself so much you dont mind the package management?


whenever I've tried RPM distro's i've eventually dropped them alltogether because of dependancy problems.

I use Suse. I don't have any dependency problems as long as I use a program that is part of the CDs or is in a Yast repository. If you install 3rd party applications you'll have dependency problems with ANY system if the source doesn't provide software via a repository system of some kind like Yast, Yum, Urpmi, or Apt-get for RPMs.

DEB files are not any better if your apt-get repository doesn't have the needed dependent files.

It seems to me that RPM package management is way behind the technology of apt, portage, and most other package management tools.
Could you offer a few objective examples of that "technology"?

For me it's only because I started out using RH and stuck with the RPM distro's. I do use others but I seem to be sticking with MDK as my main platform.

Slack and FreeBSD are also wonderful distro's but they are not on my main system so don't get used as much.

KC

Well; when I used Suse 10.0- I had to enable lots of extra unofficial yast reposatories. That gave me access to all the latest software, but sometimes programs in those reposatories didnt come with dependancies. I ended up with a big unsolveable mess of this and that version is needed and X and Y programs are needed for that Z program which I need to install the program I want.

On debian, ports, or portage I never get any of those problems.


That is just my experiance- if it really was different for you then just say so.

Again, I don't want to start a flame war. (especially when I'm the one getting flamed:))

Personally, I think this is a great thread. I don't use RPM based distributions for the same reasons as stated above, but I don't have anything against them. They seem harder to use for some reason. Anyway - now that I have contributed nothing to the discussion...

RPM, Synaptic, etc.--package managers are all the same to me. Actually, I like the fact that YaST (in the case of SUSE) keeps track of dependencies and so forth, allowing me to add and delete packages as I desire while taking care of the details for me. :) I cannot recall ever having a dependency problem as long as I used a repository or CD/DVD associated with the correct release (e.g. SUSE 10.0). I think I needed to build perhaps three packages from source (no biggie) and have never had to use any "oddball" repositories for SUSE. For that matter, even compiling from source I use CheckInstall to create RPMs so I can add and delete them as desired using YaST.

Well I use an RPM-based distro because Fedora was the first distro I installed. I don't remember why I chose Fedora, but it didn't have anything to do with package management. Personally I haven't had any problems using yum to install packages. I don't use a GUI like yumex; I prefer the CLI 'cause it impresses the kids. :)

Similarly, I use apt-get from the CLI when I'm using Debian. No problems with that either. In both the Fedora and Debian cases, I've added additional repositories to the respective config files.

What I said in my first post may have been poorly worded

I dont think the RPM technology is behind apt or ports etc., its more the fact that most RPM distros dont have an official reposatory, and if they do- then it is small (compared to debians or the BSD's).

Anyway- sounds like most people use RPM based distros because thats what they started with, right?

How is that a problem with the technology? That is just some yahoo running a poor repository. If you don't load the repository with all the needed dependent RPMs or DEBs then neither Yast, Apt-get, Yum,URPMI, or Smart is going to work. That is human sloppiness not a fault of the package system.

if you see my above post I corrected myself on the technology thing...

true- but the reason I have to use unofficial yast repository's is because rpm distro's official repositories are small and not up-to-date.

btw, I got all my "unofficial" repositories from the suse site:
http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_Ya...e_Repositories


wow, talking on this thread is like talking on an IRC channel:)

Then your criticism ISN'T about RPMs at all. It's about how "complete" you consider the distro to be. What one considers complete others consider "polluted with unstable apps".

Most of the RPM distros are pretty conservative. I don't think that has to do with RPMs just the direction that such distros went.

The biggest reason I'm with Suse is it's stability. The second one was Yast. The first distro I tried was Mandrake I loved the drake tools but I was put off by having a newly released distro having 700mb of updates and patches on the day it went gold. There released distros might have as well been the cooker test platform.

Unfortunantly Suse may be heading in the same direction with the bugs in 10.1 :rolleyes:

Ok, well look at ubuntu. It is far from being bloated, in fact it rarely includes 2 apps that do the same thing in its releases. However, if you want to install an application that is not included in the distro, all you have to do is enable the multiverse repository, and you can be 90% sure that the app (and all of its dep's) will be in there.

For example, try installing VLC on suse... then try installing it on ubuntu. (neither ship with vlc installed)


Its not how compleat the distro is. It has very little to do with the distro. The fact is that RPM distro's do not have a central, official reposatory (besides the apps that ship with it).

I may be incorrect here but the multiverse repository is NOT maintained by ubuntu. It's a 3rd party repository. And it is a real exception to have such a central repository. But part of the problem is that ubuntu is more of a community distro. Most of the RPM distros have a much more corporate need to them. I use Suse with business clients. I don't want them to install just any app whos only testing has been to compile the source code on a suse box and make a RPM file. Much of the add on packages in any distro have had little real testing. Many work just fine and others might not.

You have valid points but it isn't a reflection of RPM in my opinion but the distros that happen to have selected RPM as format. Many of the RPM groups are long standing members of the Linux community. Ubuntu is a new distro. Both sides are addressing different needs.

I would like to thank you guys for the information posted here. I've learned a good deal of information based on what you all have said. I never thought about the buisiness applications of RPM based distributions. While they may target business users, I would argue that Ubuntu's or even Arch's stable tree is enough for most day to day things. I understand that some "speciality" software may not be included, but leafpad, abiword and the like probably are. If not, they are in an "extra"} repo which is just as well tested and maintained. (At least this is the case with Arch.)

On other thing about RPM distros and this IS a valid complaint about them. At first there was only Red Hat and RPMs. NO method of solving dependencies existed. One of the reasons APT-GET and deb was created was because RPMs could report what dependencies they needed but no system was in place to solve them.

Suse created Yast to solve that problem but they closed sourced it. Mandrake created URPMI but it's a hobby distro and it never caught on outside of drake fanatics.

Yum was created by yellow dog to solve RPMs and was adopted by Fedora so Yum finally made it into Red Hat.

Suse open sourced Yast finally. There are many solutions now but many are late comming to the field. Smart is another package manager that is cross system.

Some of this problem is that package managment was late to come to Red Hat and part of the problem is that most of the RPM distros were very conservative. Both Fedora and Suse are changing but that mindset is in place.

Its an interesting point about the repo size - I think its because there are a lot more RPM distros and they're a lot more seperate. Eg. Ubuntu can use the Debian universe of packages but Mandriva and Fedora are too different to have common package repositories.

That said with Mandriva the main (official) and contrib (semi-official - built on Mandriva build servers but not supported for security/bug updates) repos amount to over 11,000 packages. Add PLF to that and I've never had a depedency problem trying to get apps I need. These numbers are not far off Debian's repo at 15,000 packages and the same as Gentoos at 11,000.

I think you are wrong to say that rpm technology is behind others. Firstly comparing apt, portage and rpm is not correct. RPM is similar to DPKG in Debian which has exactly the same problems as RPM if you do not use a package manager. If you had compared yum, urpmi, yast and smart with apt or portage, then you would have been comparing like for like. Most of the package managers on RPM based distros work more or less the same as apt (some are better in my personal opinion) and if you don't like them, you can still use apt and synaptic.

I have noticed that most people who complain about RPM don't actually know how to use it. For example many people will try to install rpms not meant for their distro and moan when they experience problems. Not all rpm based distros come from the same code base or share package repositories, so rpms meant for one distro may not work on another distro. Most Debian distros use the same package repos, so packages rarely fail to install although this is changing with Ubuntu and variants taking their own path which is not always compatible with Debian.

Well, reddazz - in my views there are problems with the idea that you need a binary built for your distro. Needing a linux binary is a given but doesn't linux (for the most part, at least) promote working together and sharing? I understand that the problem with RPMs and their host distro's code base is unavoidable, but I tend to think that other things handle the problem better. Debian's .deb file extension works well across systems because they are based on the same code base, and Arch's .pkg works regardless (or so I believe - Frugalware and Arch share very little code as far as I have heard, but both have the same package manager and - If I am not mistaken - both can use the others .pkg files.)

I understand why someone would use an RPM / YaST / urpmi based distribution, but I believe that the concept of RPM's - not their technology - is becoming a bit dated.

(NOTE! I do NOT want to seem like I am attacking anyone - I'm sorry if any of these statements offend you. Please don't turn my statement around to turn this into a flamewar. Thank you)

Whats the exact problem with having a binary built for your distro? Whilst I agree with you that opensource culture encourages sharing and working together, in many instances, its not always possible because of various reasons e.g. Suse would not be able to share repos with Fedora Core or Mandriva because Suse puts some parts of KDE and GNOME in /opt whilst the other two use /usr.

As you mentioned above most Debian based distros share the same code base, so package compatibility will obviously be a lot better than RPM based distros. Most rpm based distros do not share the same history, code base and package repositories (e.g. Suse was at one time based on Slack, Mandriva forked completely from Redhat 5.x, Yoper was based on LFS and Slack), so their packages will not always be compatible with one another. This does not mean that dpkg is better than rpm because without apt, dpkg is just as problematic as rpm without yum, urpmi etc. The fact that Linux distros put stuff in different places, makes it difficult to build an rpm that will work on all rpm based distros. Similar problems are now happening in the Debian community because some derivatives like Ubuntu no longer maintain complete binary compatibility with the main Debian distro.

I am not sure what you mean here since the concept or rpms is similar to the concept of Debian, Arch, Slack and other distro package management systems i.e. to provide packages for their distro and make it easy way to install and manage them. I am sure if rpm was as bad as some people make it out to be, Redhat would have fixed it or chose a different package management system. As it is, rpm works well on Linux and other Unix like systems such as FreeBSD, AIX, HPUX, Solaris etc(although its not the main package management system).

Stating that RPMs are becoming dated wasn't entirely correct - I should have said that the individual nature of distros is what leads to my choice of debian / "independent" players (Arch and Slackware's package format) over RPM distros. Putting things in different folders leads to these problems (and while things have been done to correct this i.e the Freedesktop standards most RPM based distros do little to nothing to conform to them)

I didn't mean to say that RPMs are worse than anything else, but rather that the distros that are using them seem to do very little to help in the standardizing of all of the information that the RPMs actually need to install correctly.

I totally agree with you that there is a problem in terms of distros not following standards, particularly the FHS but remember that this is not just a problem with rpm based distros, but almost all Linux distros. I have actually never seen a Linux distro that follows all of the FHS. I guess its impossible for the distros to change now, because it takes a lot of time and effort to rewrite and implement new specs for an OS. The BSDs do a better job of following the FHS and its easy to find out where stuff is because they all follow similar conventions (which makes porting an app from one BSD to another very easy because most files go in the same places).

You have a great point here. Things like naming packages the same and using the same paths would make it a lot easier for people to install rpms for another distro on their own distro. This is never going to happen though because of the reasons I mentioned above and if it did happen I am not sure compatibility will improve much since package versions and dependency versions may differ.