GRUB : couple quick newbie questions...

audriusb at homelan.lt audriusb at homelan.lt
Wed May 4 13:51:41 UTC 2005


Quoting James Wilkinson <ubuntu at westexe.demon.co.uk>:

Slackware Linux has one big issue: consider a situation, when you are installing
a new package, which requires new version of library, say "GTK+ 3.0", for
example. You downloaded this library and installed it, overwriting "GTK+ 2.0"
on your computer. What shall you get after launching your favourite tool, that
is designed for "GTK+ 2.0"?
Second question: suppose that you installed OpenOffice 2.0 and hated it. What
additional packages you should remove after this package was wiped out? Are you
sure that your HD has no garbage and all installed software continue to work?
APT system was worked out as a solution of these problems and I like it. It
combines quick and dirty installation from binary packages with excellent
tuning when you are installing source packages.
There are many Linuxes that use another package management systems or don't use
them at all. You have a choice: simply change a distribution!

Gediminas Bukauskas


> kamstrup wrote:
> > Slax is < 250 MB, and has a full featured desktop... How can it not be
> > possible to squeeze a live-installer Ubuntu onto a cd then? An
> > installer would be nothing but a bunch of Python scripts and
> > .glade-files. Should be doable in under 1 MB, provided that the system
> > has a layout that allows for running from cd and hd.
>
> Problem is that Ubuntu uses .deb packages.
>
> Live CDs don't need packages: you upgrade them by replacing the CD. A
> full install really needs some sort of packaging for managing upgrades.
> And deb packages (and RPMs too, come to that) are not merely archive
> formats where you can run the program from within the package: you need
> to run the install scripts (and have writable filesystems so the install
> scripts can do their job).
>
> There probably are ways around this. But it involves making the job of
> the packagers much more difficult, or a very smart program to be able to
> take a .deb and its installed files on disk, and create a "diff" that
> can recreate the original .deb from the installed package plus the
> difference.
>
> (Signed packages aren't actually a problem: you can store the signatures
> separately, and if the "package recombiner" does its job well, the
> signatures will match).
>
> As I say, such a program would have to be pretty smart. And to my
> knowledge, it doesn't exist. So someone would have to write it. And it
> would make an install from such a CD much slower.
>
> So it's possible. But definitely not worth it.
>
> James.
>
> --
> E-mail address: james | "This thing is bigger than the both of us!"
> @westexe.demon.co.uk  | "Oh Tom! It's ... it's an elephant!"
>
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