Why some say "rpm hell"

[Chris Murphy]

On Nov 22, 2013, at 2:01 AM, AP <worldwithoutfences at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Exactly true. Its more like the analogy of cars. Some people prefer
> Ford, some Chevrolet, others like Mercedes-Benz better, but ultimately
> they all have an engine that runs on fuel.

A better analogy that involves cars needs some additional detail: Different automakers put the driver's seat in different locations. Mercedes right front, Ford right rear, Chevy on the luggage rack, Jaguar in the trunk, etc.

And I say that because package management is a viciously nasty user experience. Once you've committed to learning one of them, you definitely don't want to learn how to use another one - assuming, you know, you actually have work to do rather than just screwing around with computers all day long, learning mindnumbing estoteric b.s like package managers.

And fuel in this analogy, is the linux kernel. The only thing they have in common is the kernel, which by all rights end users should be the least interested in or interact with. 

> 
> I regret that I don't get much time to learn such a wonderful
> technology of Linux!!

I would rather gut myself than learn another package management system, even if I had the time. I just want a little icon to click on and maybe a button that says Install, because I actually care to spend time using the application I've gone to the effort to locate, rather than figuring out how to install, remove, or update it.

I wonder how many thousands of man hours are consumed maintaining the different packaging systems, and manually dealing with dependency conflict resolution. It must be insane.


Chris Murphy