Scott Bronson wrote:
WHAT??!?!?! You'd rather have tarball than RPM? Sure, go ahead. Everything is still available in tar format. You just have to go download it all separately. Then, once you install it, it can never be removed. And you won't know until you run and crash if you have the appropriate other tarballs installed.
What do mean that I can't remove a package that was distributed as a tarball?. All I have to do is go in and delete the files. Look at Netscape. All I have to do is delete /opt/netscape; and the same is true for all other packages. If I use an rpm, I have to wonder about the security issues of installing a pre-compiled binary as root. It adds another "layer of abstraction" between me and the application. The rpm also forces me to install to a pre-determined directory. I left windows because I wanted more control over these things, this whole rpm thing is forcing everything back to a windows style of installation. The whole rpm-database thing is just a "registry waiting to happen". On quite a few occaisions, I deleted some programs, manually, without going thru the rpm -remove procedure, and the rpm wouldn't install because the database said it was already installed. Sure, I can tell it to force it, or upgrade it, but why even deal with these things. In summary, I prefer to compile a package, copy it to a location of my choosing, and delete it anyway I want. Of course, for installing new systems, the rpm format is nice. At least Suse provides MD5sums for all it's rpm's, Redhat does not. Everytime you install a binary rpm as root, you open "exposing your system to possible trouble". I'm sure the NSA loves the binary rpm format. - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archiv at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>