[Tfug] The Joy of OSX, and the friction coefficient of goose droppings.

[Andrew Ayre]

Tim Ottinger wrote:
> Rich wrote:
>>
>> In my experience, FOSS tends to be packaged better for OS X than for 
>> Linuxes, because fewer assumptions are made about what libraries will 
>> be available. For example, try getting VLC going on RHEL 4 without 
>> upgrading it to a point where Red Hat won't support it... Whereas it 
>> just works on OS X 10.4. Yes, the two OSs were released within a few 
>> months of each other, and you pay a heck of a lot more for RHEL.
> Yes, RHELL sucks, but you should try a debian-based distribution.  APT 
> is a whole world of difference, and probably the best packaging of FOSS 
> that exists.  Installing any packaged software is trivial, and the 
> repositories are large and broad.  A little time with Debian and you'd 
> change your mind.  It understands dependencies and has a good 
> installation solver.
> 
> I liked mac better than RH.  I *almost* like windows better than 
> Redhat.  YUM begins to close the gap between redhat and windows.  I just 
> hate messing with dll hell, library hell, R hell, etc.  I'd rather have 
> a system that works.  YUM almost works most of the time, for enough of 
> the software to make it tolerable.  It used to have far less software, 
> though, so you got back into the same prob I had with Mac and software 
> installed two or three different ways (Windows-like).
> 
> MacPorts doesn't do nearly enough.  The repos are too small and the 
> solver wasn't as good as Debian.  Call me spoiled.
> 
> I think that the debian/ubuntu/etc are the best consumer linux versions 
> and they certainly have the best package management of any operating 
> system I've used (Unixen, Windowses, CP/Ms and proprietary) in my life 
> as a computer user.
> 
> As a python and debian user, I'm as spoiled as a geek can be.
> 

+1

Having used RPMs, Gentoo, etc. in the past I won't even bother looking 
at a distribution these days unless it uses the Debian packaging system 
and repos.

-- 
Andy
PGP Key ID: 0xDC1B5864