[KLUG Members] Package Manager Problems

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>>>A couple months ago I installed Debian on a HP Unix (PA-RISC processor)
>>>workstation and was very intrigued by "apt".  (I chose Debian because it
>>>was the only distribution supporting PA-RISC)
>>>The few times I've installed Debian, I've found the install process to
>>>be somewhat, ah, well, "confusing" ...  I would very much like to see a
>>What did you find confusing? I have Debian running on a B132L
>>workstation. It seemed pretty straight forward (though not quite
>>the same as a Solaris/HPUX/Redhat install).

I tried Debian along with Suse sometime in 2000.   I know this was along time
ago, and maybe everything is worlds better.  If so someone can point it out to
me, I'd appreciate it, as I'm always willing to give something another go around.

My beefs with Debian where-

1. I come from a "real" UNIX heritage.  Debians filesystem seemed bizarre.  This
was before the FSSTD.  Are they tracking that?  I kept looking for files and
exclaiming "Bloody Hell!!", and all the cubicles surrounding mine emptied out.

2. Feature-per-Feature Debian was a dead looser.  LVM?  Forget it.  MD? Not in
the installer, which makes it pretty worthless.  ACL Support?  Nope.  No
filesystems beyond what is in the stock kernel, but RH doesn't provide any
either, but that does eliminate a motivation to change.  Integration with LDAP
or Kerberos would have meant a recompile of most service packages, yeech!  To
build anything I'd call a server would have involved distro brain surgery.

3. The whole stable/unstable/testing trees are just confusing.  I understand
conservatism, but the versions of packages in stable was ridiculous.  I'd call
it "stale" not "stable".  RedHat's (or SuSe's) versions may not denote anything
philosophical but they have clear meanings; 8.0 = the packages that came on the
CD that said 8.0.  Debian didn't seem to provide any nearly as succinct
markers-in-time.   It seems that one could say one was running unstable, but
that didn't mean anything,  one had to say "unstable as of Aug 12, 2001", which
isn't nearly as useful.  Obviosuly all distributions slowly mutate within
versions, but after while the disto-masters slap a new tag on it.  Mayeb I just
missed something.

4. Do these people live in a world with management?  I'm supposed to list on an
audit sheet that I'm running the "unstable" version?  Now I'm a socialist,  but
the 60's are over.  We need to live alongside these dim-witted ignorant
capitalists at least for forseeable future so at least choose the greek word for
unstable as the tag. :)