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There are many disadvantages (RPM command in brackets): 1. You lose all the advantages of a package-based system: a. You will not be able to un-install the software like all the other on your system. [-e] b. No ability to query the version, installed size, description, or installation date. [-qi] c. No ability to verify the installation. [-q --verify] d. No post-install / post-uninstall scripts. e. You lose the effectiveness of picking a random file/directory on your system and the system telling you what piece of software owns it. [-qf] 2. Proprietary/closed-source software is not compilable. I see (1) as the greatest disadvantage. Although SuSE may be behind in generating up-to-date RPMs of their packages, the community may not be. If the demand is high enough, you can almost guarantee that some user has greated a SuSE-compliant RPM. Of course, once other distributions start using the LSB (RedHat will, thank god, by the end of the year), you will be able to install RedHat RPMs on your SuSE machine without any loss. I can't wait for that day. You might want to check out a piece of software called CheckInstall, which will create RPMs (or DEBs, pkgs, for that matter), when you run 'make install'. If is available at http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/. It could be worth your time to check it out. On 9 Mar 2002, Landy Roman wrote:
are there any cons in updating via source automake autconf aclocal vs the rpm of suse....
i see suse is not up to date on these packages
-- Karol Pietrzak PGP KeyID: 3A1446A0