Re: SEUL: Article by Alan Cox

[Micah Yoder <LYoder@cyberis.net>]

cuplan@grove.ufl.edu wrote:

> Not really.  If I can speak frankly about RPM, it's the bane of a RedHat
> system.  I cannot stand RPM.  It doesn't provide adequate user input or
> feedback to be successful.  The graphical version in X is better, but it's
> not enough, IMHO.  Moreover, RPM is useless for the good old
> configure/compile/install technique.

Well, I hate to disagree, but I think RPM works pretty well for
installing, uninstalling, and keeping track of distributed precompiled
software.  Yes, we certainly do need the X front end to it.  I don't
know how DEB compares.

but others are working on RPM frontends, and if we're not doing a
distro, there's no reason to debate RPM vs. DEB here.

And end users aren't gonna be doing configure/make/make install.  And,
of course, RPM doesn't prevent you from doing that - I do it all the
time on my RedHat system.

> Really, I feel RPM causes more problems than it solves.

It does sometimes, especially when the RPMs are not constructed well. 
Like in RedHat, the postgresql and dosemu RPMs leave out some key
things.  But I think there the fault lives with whoever made the RPMs,
not RPM in general.

And yes, there have been some dependency bugs, but the --nocheck (or
something like that) option forces it, and I think I've seen fewer bugs
in RH5.1 than in 4.1.

> What about a program that requests modem baud and location, takes the
> ISP's phone number, then dials the ISP and prints out what the ISP says.
> The point I'm getting at is that, with a little tweaking, a PPP program
> could be made that would not only automatically set up the dialing, baud
> rate, etc, but would also write its own chat script.  Just a thought.

There are already PPP configurators.  I tried them once but then gave up
because I already had a working chat script and they were just causing
trouble.

> And, of course, "X-ifying" stuff is always a great help to the end-user.

Yeah, it's essential.

> FWIW, I'm currently writing a GTK frontend to the freeciv server.

Cool!  That *will* be a good thing...