Re: Independant (or free) updater ?

[David Lloyd <lloy0076 rebel net au>]

Karl et al:

> >  Don't even bother me until you get it working ... then we will
> > discuss about decentralization ... of course if you stick to
> > tar.gz you don't keep track of dependancies, sure the tool have
> > far less problem to solve. But then you're back to Windows way of
> > managing systems and I'm certainly not interested in this.

> I certainly agree with this statement. Besides, I see no problems come from
> centralization of the information about releases. None at all. With some

Apart from the fact that RPM can make people wholly ignorant of their
systems.

> What I do see a problem in, is the diversity of distributions needs. Sure, I
> won't want to live in a all-SuSE world where all systems are setup just the
> same. Different priorities will always lead to different configurations and
> the Linux is a free system, free to be configured just the way you like.

I agree. In a business environment running multiple versions -- even of
the same distribution -- is quite ridiculous. It adds to support costs,
not to mention confusion. You may not want to live in an "all SuSe"
world, but I may wish to. Diversity is the answer, but diversity for
diversity's sake is not.

> I would wish though, that the standards efforts would be far enough to make
> sure that no application needs different RPMs for different distributions.

If all the distributions were the same they wouldn't be different
distributions. Perhaps that's an obvious, even sarcastic, statement but
it is true.

> Like there was a layer on top of Redhat, SuSE, etc. where scripts could be
> pluged in and they layer would forward it to the places where they are called
> in a distro normally.

Given that you are able to write to the database, why don't you start
the "Linux Layer on Top of RPM Project"?

> But I dream, embedded Linux, desktop Linux and mainframe Linux, how can I
> dare think of the conflicting interests lead to a unified installation
> process in the century?

You just did. I'm sure if you did rpm -qa MY.INTERNAL.DATABASE you would
find a package called brain. I wonder whether it's lacking any
dependencies...

DL
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We are are determined to be people...
...we don't have to live like we are forced to live.
 - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr