Re: APT v. YUM -- remember, APT !~ RPM, DPKG ~ RPM

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Sun, 2004-11-21 at 14:46, mike808@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> I guess the Fedora folks just couldn't find the courage to pick APT
> to replace the now apparently legacy "rpm".

Now hold on!  Don't compare APT to RPM, they are _two_different_things_.
Compare DPKG to RPM (back-ends), and APT to YUM (front-ends).

All distros use their own "front-end" update approach.  For Red Hat
distributions, it was officially the Red Hat Network (RHN), largely the
"up2date" tool for the past 3 years prior to Fedora.

Red Hat decided in mid-2003 that a community distribution approach was
better, and added _both_ APT and YUM support in up2date (even for RHEL).

>From there, Red Hat decided that it would work on YUM.  Fedora.US (the
original Fedora Project) had already near-perfected APT-RPM IMHO.  I had
been using FreshRPMS.NET prior, and Fedora.US's repository, RPM SPEC file
changes and the added capabilities in its APT implementation sold me
completely.

RPM is _quite_good_ IMHO.  So it's not a "legacy" issue with RPM, RPM
_has_ evolved quite well.  It's merely the APT v. YUM argument _while_
RPM is still used as a back-end.

I think the pro-YUM started with RPM argument is rather weak.  We're all
talking the _front-end_ manager, regardless of whether or not DPKG and RPM
are the actual _back-ends_.  DPKG and RPM are very much alike in many
capabilities, each adding capabilities in newer versions to match the others.

So don't confuse the "front-end" with the "back-end."  YUM works very
well.  But APT is far more proven and the "not invented here" attitude
is rather non-applicable IMHO.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                    b.j.smith@ieee.org 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly
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latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.



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