Re: [GENERAL] Installation simplicity

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Duncan Kinder wrote:
> RPMs are for people who do not know how or are not comfortable with
> compiling and installing Linux distributions. It defeats their purpose to
> expect these people to jump through hoops while installing rpms. The rpm
> should do all - repeat all - the work for them.

RPMs (and other distribution formats; I personally attached to Debian
GNU/Linux) are also for busy system administrators who cannot spent hours
compiling, installing and configuring soft. Open software is free like free
speech, but not like free beer :) Either I have to pay money or spent time.
RPMs and the like help installing/upgrading. Recently I've upgraded a
dozen of computers that ran Debian 2.0 to 2.1. I spent about 10 minutes per
computer - login, run dselect, update a list of packages, verify, and
upgrade. Without such system I'd have to spent hours on every system.

Oleg.
----
Oleg Broytmann http://members.xoom.com/phd2/ phd2(at)earthling(dot)net
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.