Hi,

I would like to have your opinions on the update systems/package managers available in every distribution (rpm, dpkg, emerge,...) ?
What are the pros and cons of using them ?

It is really a great way to keep one's system up to date...does anybody still prefer tar.gz packages ? Why ? Is it simply to "control" what's done or just the geek way of installing packages ?

TIA

I prefer tar.gz (w/checkinstall). Just the other night, I downloaded a program and didn't like one of the buttons' text, so I grepped the source code, edited it, recompiled, and - hey - nice button. *g* Trivial, but that's all I can do. The principal applies to your actual hackers, though - control. Open source binaries without the source code doesn't really follow the plan. *g* I suppose there are 'source packages' but I just found rpms to be a pain the brief while I used them. Much prefer tgz packages there with the simple /var/log/packages directory instead of that funky rpm database. And Debian - I dunno - I just don't care for the whole apt-get thing. I like tracking freshmeat incidental to surfing slashdot, seeing something cool, going and getting it, and making it that night. No waiting on packages and no dealing with a giant list of crap from a central server - these five thousand and three packages can be updated. This package is broken. Blah blah. Source first, tgz second!