[ale] linus doesn't like Debian?

[Brian Pitts]

Jeff Lightner wrote:
> rpm all by itself doesn't do any dependency checking but yum which is on
> most systems that use rpm's DOES.

And I'll give yum credit; I was able to use it to do a network upgrade 
from Fedora (then still Core) 5 to 6, even though the Fedora wiki was 
littered with warnings that it wasn't tested/supported and might die 
horribly.

> Funny to me is folks pooh-poohing the idea that Debian is a "technical"
> thing relying on "source" compilations and then arguing that Debian
> package management is superior because of the way it handles "source"
> installations.  You can't have it both ways.

Sure you can. Just because you don't need to do something doesn't mean 
it can't be handled well if you choose to do it anyway.

> The average "user" (i.e. non-geek) does NOT want to compile source -
> hell they don't even want to have to install packages after the fact.
> They just want it to work out of the box for what they do (web surfing,
> playing music, playing videos and playing games).   On this score there
> aren't many distros that aren't lacking which is why it is so difficult
> for us to convert friends and family to Linux.   All of these things CAN
> be done on Linux of course but they take effort the "users" are not
> comfortable with.

Almost any distro I can think of does this better than the OS from 
Redmond. Ubuntu does it particularly well

1) Web surfing. Firefox is installed along with a video playback plugin 
(embedded Totem). You're prompted to install Flash the first time you 
visit a page that uses it. I can't remember if the Java plugin is 
handled similarly.

2) Music. Many codecs play out of the box in the applications labeled 
"Movie Player" and "Rhythmbox Music Player." Attempting to play a file 
encoded with a codec you don't have (eg patent-restricted format like 
mp3), opens a wizard that walks you through installing it. 
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/easy-codec-installation

3) Videos. See above; the only hitch is that there is no wizard to 
enable DVD playback. 
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

4) Games. Many games are installed and work out of the box. Whether 
you're a fan of FPS, strategy, simulation, or what have you, you can 
find more fun free software games through Gnome-App-Install. If your 
game requires 3d acceleration to work, no problem. It's already enabled 
if you have graphics hardware with free software drivers (ie Intel). 
Otherwise, enable the binary driver in the restricted drivers manager, 
which popped up a message about this the first time you logged in. 
https://launchpad.net/restricted-manager

> Having installed Debian (Sarge and Woody) along with Redhat and Fedora I
> am continually amazed at folks that think that the apt style utilities
> are easier than Yum.  These apt utilities IMO are NOT intuitive to use
> at all.

If we're comparing frontends, i think Gnome-App-Install is easier to use 
and Synaptic is more powerful than Pirut or Yumex. If we're comparing 
rpm and yum to dpkg and aptitude (or apt-get for those more stuck in 
their ways), what's intuitive is what you're used to.

-Brian