[buug] tired of redhat, and i want something new to play with

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Nick Moffitt (nick at zork.net):

> Bullshit.  Debian's packages are a pain in the ass, and have no real
> benefit over RPM.  What Debian wins at is package *policy*.  They make
> sure that all the packages are created in a consistent unified manner,
> making tools like apt even *possible*.  
> 
> Apt is not the package manager -- it's just a downloader and
> dependency resolver.  It's an amazing tool, but it makes use of the
> fact that debian is VERY PICKY about packaging policy.

Strongly concur.  This is the main point I try to get across in
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/debian-policy .

To commenting further (and my real reason for AOLing your post), the
obnoxiously common notion that the rpm package format somehow comprises
a "standard" is pretty much clueless from top to bottom:  Just pulling
down a *.i386.rpm package from J. Random Archive and doing "rpm -Uvh
foo.i386.rpm" in expectation of success -- merely because you run _some_
rpm-based distribution for Intel -- is an excellent way to fux0r your
system, and is a common bonehead error among new users.  In fact, only
if the package is built for specifically _both_ your particular
distribution _and_ its distribution release version are you reasonably
likely to be able to install it -- dependencies permitting.

_LSB_ qualifies as a "standard" in the sense of the term contemplated.
RPM is merely a file format, variously implemented.

-- 
Cheers,           find / -user your -name base -print | xargs chown us:us
Rick Moen
rick at linuxmafia.com