Bad experiences with distros (was Re: [H-GEN] CRUX (A programmers linux distro))

[Tim Browne]

David Jericho wrote:
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> 
> Bradley Marshall wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 04:42:52PM +1000, David Jericho wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> I have Kickstart setups here that'll rebuild a workstation from cold 
>>> metal in about 15 minutes at 1.8 GBytes installed. It takes another 
>>> 10 to update the box using yum or up2date.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Doesn't it seem wrong that the updating takes 2/3rds of the time of the
>> install?
>>  
>>
> 
> No, why should it? The distribution is proactive with respect to bugs 
> and security issues, and I do have to reboot the machine. Fedora Core 1 
> is over a year old now and anyone who's been paying attention on 
> debian-security, fedora-security or any of the million other security 
> mailing lists will notice a lot of patches have been made. RPM also does 
> do MD5 sums and other paranoia checks on files it's responsible for. On 
> a new file system, it only needs to check it wrote the file correctly.
> 
> I could be using one of the *BSDs or Gentoo, often recompiling my 
> security patches from source. I could also be using Solaris with a 
> shockingly bad auto updater that never quite works right after following 
> the documentation like a zealot, or a recommended patch set installer 
> that seems to try to install everything without first checking if it has 
> been applied in the past.
> 
> Out of interest, I just did check what does get updated on an install. 
> The kernel-source at 40MB compressed, OpenOffice at 73 compressed, Perl 
> at 15 compressed, and XFree86 at around 30 compressed. Glibc and a SMP 
> and non-SMP kernel will also get updated. I don't have a problem so far 
> with 10 minutes.
> 
> The only thing I do miss about Debian is apt-list-changes that informs 
> me of changes between versions before I install them.
> 
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David,
Have you ever had any problems with the RPM system? If so are these regular or rare?

I moved away from RedHat because I got a corrupted RPM system. After many hours 
  looking for and trying various solutions I still could not get the thing 
fixed. From memory this was back at version 8, I assume they continue to update 
and improve the RPM system.

Tim Browne.