I agree with Zentara. I know plenty of people, that code and that are involved in bigtime linux projects ( i.e., that know their stuff ) that hate RPM. It's not just us being nuts. With RPM, you are stuck with 'default' settings of the RPM packager. Most of them aren't relocatable. And you really have little control over the configuration of the package. You just have to assume it's all o.k. Take lynx. If I want an ncurses based Lynx, I have to build an RPM or a source package anyway, cause the RPM packages always seem to default to slang. The thing is if you want to have some 'say' in how your system works, use sources and build from them or make your own RPMS ( which is still just building from sources. ) I think one day RPM may have a front end to have more custom control, but it's no day soon. Other things: If you are dealing with unstable apps, there's usually no debugging info, so if you were working with an app and wanted to help narrow down misbehaviour you'd be better off recompiling it anyway, so that you can give meaningful information to the developer or try to find out the cause yourself. I think RPM is great for building the 'core' dist suite, and after that you're on your own. As far as uninstalling goes: Many recent apps also have a 'make uninstall' option so you can painlessly remove stuff. People building from CVS use this all the time. Also you have instmon, which if you write scripts can be handy in building a build removal script if neccesary to assist the removable of source installed apps. So removing these apps isn't as difficult as the poster implied. -M On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, zentara wrote:

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.

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