On Thursday 04 January 2024 at 19:34:05, Steve Litt wrote:

> tito via Dng said on Sun, 31 Dec 2023 00:42:28 +0100
>
> > Doesn't this break the concept of package management?
>
> Yes. Yes yes yes yes YES!

So, that IS bad news (see below).

> Packages are nice for some things, and not for others. For instance,
> the Debian package for VimOutliner sucked and the first troubleshooting
> move we made on somebody saying it didn't work was to have them
> download the tarball and take about five easy steps.

Splendid example, but isolated. In general (in my opinion, both as a personal
user of Devuan, and as an engineer working with several companies using Debian
and/or Devuan) the DEB package management system works very well (and better
than RPM, since you can upgrade between releases). People rely on it.

> > The problem is not the system you, me or the other list members will be
> > using if systemd sabotage succeeds, the problem is that if the cure breaks
> > the deb file package management, devuan will not be a viable solution (like
> > debian is/was) for common people,

I would not have said "common"; I would have said "a majority" - same concept,
but allowing for the fact that I'm talking about IT managers, who probably
don't want to be regarded as "common" :)

> I disagree. Even though Gates and Jobs went to great length to convince
> computer users they were too stupid to run commands, they're not.
> Especially not people who migrate to Linux.

They're not too stupid to run commands, I agree, but they don't have the time
to learn about application inter-dependencies and follow every application's
announcements about updates, and run their own test environments to compile
the latest and check it doesn't break anything on their production machines...

> And I'll bet there are ways to accomplish all this within the package
> manager framework. I won't postulate what those ways are, because the
> a couple times ago when I postulated, people jumped down my throat.

All I can say to this is that unless the Devuan project can continue to
provide system admins and IT managers with a convenient way to install all the
applications they want on their machines, with compatible libraries, and to
know that these have been tested to a reasonable extent, and that they can
then upgrade those applications (either when new versions of individual things
come out, or as a major dist-upgrade for the whole system), then we';re just
going to become another Gentoo or Slackware, which are fine in themselves, but
are too much effort for the majority of commercial users to bother with.


Antony.

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