Stephen J. Turnbull writes:
 > I think packaging is the name of the game.  AKA "software ICs".  CTAN
 > and CPAN need this desperately (CPAN has something like it now, I
 > think).  Debian is now way out of hand, with over 3500 packages in the 
 > "unstable" distribution (main, contrib, and non-free, -non-US and -JP).

But ... but ... Debian has so much good stuff in it.  Let's say that I
download DJ's Ace of Penguins game package.  If I get the source code,
as I did for redhat, and compile it, and install it, I have to put it
in /usr/local/bin.  And there's no provenance included.  If, on the
other hand, I switch to Debian (as I did recently), most of my
favorite packages are included in it (e.g. mgetty+sendfax, pilot-link,
ace of penguins, netpbm, python-gtk), and I know which binaries,
config files, and documentation go with each other.

Maybe Debian over-packages, but packages are very nice.  Very nice
indeed.

Now if we could only get Debian to switch to RPM.  :)

-- 
-russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com>  http://crynwr.com/~nelson
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