Brian Kendig wrote:
Hiya! I'm new to SuSE Linux, and I like it a lot! But I've got a couple of questions as I start out with it...
(1) SuSE uses RedHat RPM's, right? Will any rpm file that works on RedHat also work on SuSE? It can't use Debian .deb files, correct?
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The last 2 posts explained it pretty good. The only thing I will add is what I have found using Mandrake and Red Hat rpm's over the years. You can usually find much more up to date files on rpmfind.net than you will find on a suse server but there may be some risk to using them. Many times, I try to upgrade to a specific version of a software package only to find it requires a newer version of a library than is included with the suse release I'm using. A good example was last week when I tried to install the latest transcode for ripping dvd's. I had to update several packages, and trying to compile them myself didn't work. Since there was no suse package available, I downloaded the package I needed from rpmfind. When I tried to install it, I found that that package required 3 other packages. This turned into a web of dependencies you wouldn't believe. At this point I set out to find mr. pacman's address which I had lost. I eventually had to uninstall all the Mandrake packages because they put certain libraries separately in it's own package and bundled others together which made dependencies which could only be satisfied by mandrake packages of the same build. Some of the suse packages would each fill the dependencies of 3 or 4 of the Mandrake packages. In other words, you can sometimes get by with a red hat or mandrake rpm, but it can also lead to problems, so if you can get a suse package that's always the better choice. It will also make upgrading in the future less complicated. JS