APT, Yum and Red Carpet

[Jos Vos]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 08:36:34AM -0400, Hans Deragon wrote:

> IMHO, we should stick with one upgrade system only.  Lets take the best 
> and support it.  The last thing I want is a community with full of 
> repositories, half apt and half yum.  Its time to make a standard for 
> package distribution within Red Hat and we should use one system wisely. 
>   I do not care which one it is, as long as it is the best.

Well, if life was that easy... then we just could choose "the best"
of everything.  But that's not the reality.  There are advantages
and disadvantages, different tastes, etc.

> It would be very couterproductive for my grandma to have to use apt for 
> installing one appl, and yum for installing another.  Imagine that she 
> has to first browse the list of apps available through apt, do not find 
> the software and then browse through the list of apps on yum.  Not very 
> intuitive.  Not the way to go.  This is one case where competition is 
> not welcomed, but a standard is.

Expect for that fact that a repository could easily support both APT
and Yum (both are just a set of additional files on the webserver),
I would not want my grandma to install software of any repository ;-).

> However, apt has synaptic available as GUI.  I am not aware of a GUI for 
> yum.  For a desktop machine, a GUI is a must.

It depends on the type of use.  For centrally maintained systems,
no non-command-line interface is needed.  Although I admit that
it would be nice if a system supports both worlds.

> There is also ximian's red carpet that could do the work.

Well... ;-)

> BTW, I joined the mailing list a week ago.  I presume that the debate of 
> yum vs apt has already been done.  Sorry if I repeat info here again.

Do you really think there is a conclusion drawn? ;-)

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos at xos.nl>
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