npsimons | # 251 | 2010-04-14, 16:59 | Report

Oh, don't even get me started; the last time I used an RPM based distribution, I remember vividly having to chase down 1001 GNOME dependency libraries; with Debian it was "apt-get install gnome" and go have a cup of tea. I'm not entirely sure how you got the above, but I can only assume you threw in a whole slew of incompatible repositories from any old post on the net and were surprised when it didn't work. I don't know how an RPM based distribution would solve this "problem", but if they do, the rest of the world would sure like to know (hint: the problem isn't with the software).

That's good to hear that they are finally catching up with apt+deb.


Oh, you mean like http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/?

Citation please; I think you may be confusing "latest and greatest version" with "secure"; if you are, you've got problems that can't be fixed in a simple forum discussion (hint: deb based distros don't just let software sit and rot; security patches are backported on a regular basis).

So you're going to blame forums obviously dedicated to hacking and tweaking for breaking security policy? Please explain how that makes any sense, because I'm just not seeing it.

I doubt it. The Linux world has been moving towards apt+deb for over a decade, and for good reason. Debian has always been better put together, with a tighter community, and the results speak for themselves: more stability, more ease of use and a wider array of supported hardware platforms.

I know RPM based distributions have improved, and I'm sure that suggestions for improvements to apt+deb are always welcome, but this move from DEB to RPM just looks like a political move to me. That, plus the fact that Moblin doesn't even have an ARM port speaks volumes. Atom may be catching up, but it has been a latecomer, power hungry scaled down version of ia32 chips better suited to netbooks than MIDs or phones. And quite honestly, throwing out perfectly good hardware because 'oh, we "upgraded" the software' just doesn't cut it.

I guess what I'm really saying is that my two major concerns are 1) support for ARM devices, including N900 in Meego (and not just "it runs!", but will it run at a decent speed) and 2) I don't believe that the community that supports Maemo (you know, that huge bazaar of people who ported 1,000 apps in two months to Maemo) will just switch over to the corporate run RPM based Moblin. I could be wrong (I hope I am) on both counts, but I will wait and see.

Still, I admit this isn't the end of the world; at least it's still Linux, and it's not like it's Gentoo or installing tarballs by hand. And I'd still prefer control over an RPM based distro to being spied on by Google through Android, or being told what I can and can't do by Apple.

CrashandDie | # 252 | 2010-04-15, 09:31 | Report

Erhm, guys.

You do realise that this has been done and dusted for *months* now. You can stop babbling and regurgitating the same arguments over and over.

- MeeGo will be RPM based, get over it.
- An initial release of MeeGo already runs on the N900. Don't whine that it's not usable, it's not meant to be usable, it's meant to be a development release.
- At least the point above shows that with a large enough community effort will be able to port MeeGo back to the N900 if required (read: if it doesn't support it officially)

If you're not happy with the above: start developing everything yourself. You already have choices: stay with Maemo 5, Mer, or, eventually, upgrade to MeeGo.

Seriously, can we get over this?

lbt | # 253 | 2010-04-15, 09:49 | Report

amen!


<padding since a succinct reply isn't appreciated>

next5 | # 254 | 2010-04-15, 17:05 | Report

This thread is seems to be debian fanatics demonstration. I can not even understand this rant against RPM, which is objectively far better than dpkg without any doubt. Many arguments passed about Dpkg/DEB usage in Debian, and how it is better than RPM, according to user experience. All these critics should realize, that most of the benefits of using Debian has nothing to do with its packaging system, and most of the criticized RPM "features" has nothing to do with RPM.

Dependency hell is the most common nonsense tied with packaging format. Neither dpkg/deb or rpm/rpm has to do with this problem. It is a problem of repositories, and how they are organized a treated. Debian use one single repository and this fact lead to rare dependency problems. With RPM, situation would be the same...

Proposing dpkg and Apt as a packaging superiority is ridiculous. Single Debian repository with all software included in it had never demanded powerfull solution, thus debian way is simple and powerless. Lets start with dpkg....

Dpkg, as every other Debian tools use completely idiotic syntax with geeky commands. Especially dpkg-query are wonderfull. Dpkg uses text database, which causes starting dpkg too slow. I heard many times that dpkg text database is much safer than fast RPM Berkley DB, but I have never met bricked RPM database. And, you can try it yourself.... Power off you computer during dpkg installing packages. Dpkg database became bricked and the only option is to repair it manually with doubtful result. Trying the same with RPM leads to inconsistent rpm database too. The difference is, rpm database can be easily repaired using rebuildb command. In fact, RPM database use transactions thus it is very safe a stable and far more faster than dpkg. Try it yourself, let say 10 times and you will see. After all, both rpm and dpkg db can be backup-ed, still rpm is faster.

Creating RPM packages is much faster and easier that DEB. Dpkg lacks many usefull features like multilib support, multi-arch support. It even can not verify installed packages, wich is the security must-have. Dpkg does not use delta packages by the default, although I know some optional delta-deb addition somewhere exists. And dpkg built-in configuration is real pain. Why should I configure packages during installation? This is the Windows installer way with its next-next-next chain. Thank you.


Moving to apt, things get more funny. It is proved, apt is the worst dependency solver ever invented. It has the most imbecile dependency solver among the all packaging front-ends. So what is so great about apt? It can manage greatly organized Debian repositories thus It is the best tool? Wake up, this is not proof of anything. You should realize fact, that Apt never proved its qualities in any other non-debian distro. All attempts to use APT in RPM world sooner or later ended, because it is such a bad solver. And not only solver. Apt syntax is another great example of debian packaging system impracticableness. Why we have dozen of apt-??? tools instead of one? Why should I remember all those? And information output is terrible. Again, geeky debian way. Look at the YUM output to see, how it should look like, in human readable form. Or, even better, lets have a look at zypper. Trying to compare APT with this fast, and most polite and powerfull dependency solving tool is just a bad joke. Zypper use same repo-md format as YUM and they are compatible. Talking about repo-md, look at this repository format and compare it with debian repository format. See it yourself, what can be configured and how repo-md can better fit you different needs.

I thing it is time to admit yourself, that RPM is far more powerfull ecosystem today and has better user front-ends to deal with dependencies. That's fact. Nobody outside Debian and its parasites uses dpkg. In fact, all those ubuntu, mepis, knoppix,.... clones uses complete package collection of Debian, no matter what package format it uses, because any other distro does not prepare so many packages for them. Any independent project never adopted dpkg/deb. On the other hand RPM was adopted by many non-Redhat and even non-Linux projects.... I know, in debian heads, it is corporate conspiracy against you greatest Debian.

Wakeup guys...

zimon | # 255 | 2010-04-15, 17:23 | Report

That was actually my (hidden) point.

The dependency hell problems Redhat and early Fedora distributions had, were because there were an official distribution which couldn't take some software because legal issues, and then several 3rd party reposiories which were incompatible with eachothers what it comes to dependencies, library versions and such.

Exactly almost same is now in Maemo repositories the situation. Official brand has done something which the unofficial brand didn't care soon enough, or there were not enough policy to cover the situation.

rpmfusion was founded just to bring finally to end to these disparities of different 3rd party repositories for Fedora, and it has succeeded.

Package format (RPM) never had anything to do about this "dependency hell problem".
Having everything under single one repository (deb) was ofcourse alot of easier then, but nowadays rapid software development needs something else and better co-operation (LSB, OpenDesktop.org, 3rd party packages and repositories)

Practically deb-policy has security problem, because GPG signatures are not embedded and automatically checked, because we know people are lazy and skip this important part of authenticity check if it is much extra work. Right now, the solution would be either to port debsigs-programs to Maemo, or rpm-programs to Maemo and start using it already.

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Last edited by zimon; 2010-04-15 at 17:29. Reason: lsm

attila77 | # 256 | 2010-04-15, 17:51 | Report

No, Debian is much much stricter than RedHat or Fedora when it comes to licensing. I used RedHat back then, the real problem was that prior to yum/urpmi/whatever you had to manually hunt down each RPM only to discover it needs some more RPMs, and that’s what apt solved. That particular case WAS solved later on by the tools mentioned above, but it did give RPM a bad name (and that’s why people refer to RPM dependency hell to this very day, a lot of people switched to Debian/Ubuntu exactly because RPM based distros were behind the curve AT THAT time).

For the record, it was the other way round. maemo.org reacted sooner to predicted changes than they actually happened (and still didn’t happen because of reasons only known to Nokia).


next5 doesn’t like debian and it’s tools for some reason. I don’t have a problem with that, everybody should be free to choose whatever tool he likes (no point in forcing people to use emacs or vi, right ?). I do have a slight problem calling Debian tools and syntax idiotic, as I think then people using dpkg can also say RPM distros and tools have an idiotic syntax. The word that is being sought here is ’different’, as have been already proven in this thread.


Face it, on a higher level nobody cares if it’s DEB or RPM. Really. Even genuine MeeGo folks, they don’t really give a toss, none of the reasons given by RPM enthusiasts here were the main motivators to the final outcome.

zimon | # 257 | 2010-04-15, 19:15 | Report

Good find that link:
http://wiki.openvz.org/Package_managers
Helpfull to many, I am sure, when transition to Meego from Maemo happens in the future.
It is missing zypper equivalences to APT and YUM though.


I several years ago made same kind of table for myself, when switching between Fedora and Debian systems back and forth. I was thinking of exporting it here in some later time when I have time to edit it, but there it is already now then. It was missing couple of items both in RPM/YUM and DPKG/APT parts, which I added.

Yes, I find it also little tiresome to remember all the different dpkg-* and apt-* commands, but of course there is also yum, yumdownloader, rpm, rpmbuild and debuginfo-install.
(Although debuginfo-install is done by ABRT nowadays in Fedora to send verbose bug reports with debugging information if it cannot heuristically find out it is a known bug already, stripping sensitive information from the bug reports and does all this automatically just asking in the end before sending for confirmation and what user was doing when the crash occured.)

I also think there is both good political/policy/unity (LSB) and technical reasons to RPM over DEB.
The most disturbing thing for me is that de facto policy do not require to have embedded GPG signatures in deb-packages and that debsigs-programs are not in use by default (/etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg)

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Last edited by zimon; 2010-04-15 at 22:02. Reason: zypper not in the table, debuginfo-install (and ABRT) is also important in rpm system for developers

sswam | # 258 | 2010-04-30, 14:10 | Report

I have a bad feeling about meego because:
- Intel promoting Atom over ARM, but ARM is a much better CPU.
- based on rpm not debian. Debian is by far the best Linux distro.
- the name sounds silly, while maemo sounds good.
- based on QT which requires C++. I prefer C.
- it's too much of a change to something that is already well-nigh perfect - n900 + maemo + Debian is a really great combination

So I suggest we forget about meego and work on improving maemo as it is already very very good. The n900 with maemo 5 is by far the best phone OS I have used, I love it.

next5 | # 259 | 2010-05-02, 14:55 | Report

ARM is better CPU for small portable devices, not better generally.

This is just personal opinion, not technical argument. Obviously developers feel it differently.

Great idea. Good luck. I think it is one of the examples, where you can realize how weak the debian community is, when we talk about independent development.

rickysio | # 260 | 2010-05-02, 15:01 | Report

Qt is also integrated into Maemo 5. And Symbian.

Point?