[Tfug] The Joy of OSX, and the friction coefficient of goose droppings.

[Tim Ottinger]

Rich wrote:
>
> In my experience, FOSS tends to be packaged better for OS X than for 
> Linuxes, because fewer assumptions are made about what libraries will 
> be available. For example, try getting VLC going on RHEL 4 without 
> upgrading it to a point where Red Hat won't support it... Whereas it 
> just works on OS X 10.4. Yes, the two OSs were released within a few 
> months of each other, and you pay a heck of a lot more for RHEL.
Yes, RHELL sucks, but you should try a debian-based distribution.  APT 
is a whole world of difference, and probably the best packaging of FOSS 
that exists.  Installing any packaged software is trivial, and the 
repositories are large and broad.  A little time with Debian and you'd 
change your mind.  It understands dependencies and has a good 
installation solver.

I liked mac better than RH.  I *almost* like windows better than 
Redhat.  YUM begins to close the gap between redhat and windows.  I just 
hate messing with dll hell, library hell, R hell, etc.  I'd rather have 
a system that works.  YUM almost works most of the time, for enough of 
the software to make it tolerable.  It used to have far less software, 
though, so you got back into the same prob I had with Mac and software 
installed two or three different ways (Windows-like).

MacPorts doesn't do nearly enough.  The repos are too small and the 
solver wasn't as good as Debian.  Call me spoiled.

I think that the debian/ubuntu/etc are the best consumer linux versions 
and they certainly have the best package management of any operating 
system I've used (Unixen, Windowses, CP/Ms and proprietary) in my life 
as a computer user.

As a python and debian user, I'm as spoiled as a geek can be.

-- 

Tim ---------------------------
http://agileotter.blogspot.com/
http://tottinge.blogsome.com/
-Tim speaks only for himself---