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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Program installation (was: Again - UI feedback from a Linux newbie)
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2000-04-25 6:55:34
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Dirk Hennig wrote:

Hi!,

> 
> I read a lot of talk about kpackage solving this problem. But right now kpackage only
> works on RPM.

Are you sure?  I ask only b/c the documentation says it works with "the
RPM, Debian, Slackware and BSD package managers"; I have not been able
to verify anything other than RPM.

> But how often do you have new software as RPM?

Well, in my case, always -- if it doesn't come that way I build my own. 
Makes administration of my machine very easy :-).

> And when you use a SuSE
> distribution and only find RedHat packages, it often just don't work. I think an
> automatical installation for .tar.gz files would be so much better. 

I'm sorry, I don't follow that.  You want a tar program?  How does that
begin to solve the problem of easy uninstalls and tracking where all
related files to a package are?  Where is information kept about a
package so one knows what belongs to it?  tar.gz files is a huge step
backwards -- basically you are saying package managers are worthless,
but their ubiquity proves the opposite.

Of course you could be saying KDE should develop its own package
manager.  Something like this has been done -- KISS, I believe.  But it
does not integrate with the packages used by the distributions, so it is
imcomplete.

Moreover, most people who get their computers will get KDE installed
from their distribution's package managers.  So you're stuck supporting
the package format.

> There would be no more
> need for people to build RPMs, to support a lot of different versions of the same program.

Hmm, how can that be?  The same tarball won't work on different
distributions any more than the same rpm won't -- different libraries,
different file locations, etc.  The nice thing about packages is that,
if they won't work, they bother to tell you, and a tarball won't.

IMHO, if not enough package formats are supported, the solution would be
to support them, not to ignore all package formats.

Ciao,

Andreas

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