deb vs. rpm

Master of Reality · Post by **Master of Reality** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:50 pm

Anyone know the difference between deb and rpm packages. Mostly i've found arguments in newsgroups and such arguing which one is better, with no real information about them.

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:00 pm

They are basically the same thing, just different ways of packaging. They serve the same basic purpose and they both have very similar features. deb files are nothing more than a tar.gz file and a control file bundled together in an archive (use the "ar" command to extract the files directly). If you wanted to know the physical format of an RPM file here is an explanation:

http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/s1-rpm-file- ... rmat.htmlg

As far as I am concerned it is 6 of one, half dozen of the other. I am more familiar with building RPM packages though and for me I find them a little easier to work with (if you have to build or change a package). Here is an excellent comparison of the different packaging formats:

http://www.kitenet.net/~joey/pkg-comp/

X11 · Post by **X11** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:30 am

Well, that link about package format further concludes that Solaris is CRAP, actually if I ever have my own Media empire, I am going to make sure it gets the Worst Unix of the Year award or something. Having used it, I think it is terrible, and unlike most free BSD and Linux distributions, very poorly documented.

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:59 am

X11 wrote:Well, that link about package format further concludes that Solaris is CRAP,

I am pretty sure I told you this when you were looking at that sparc box. I'm not a fan either and I've had to deal with it quite a bit over the last 10 years. Fortunately Linux now gets first choice whenever something new goes in.

Master of Reality · Post by **Master of Reality** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:11 pm

I think the easiest thing for me to do to compare, is... install Fedora Core 5 on my Desktop, and install Debian on my serverish computer.

X11 · Post by **X11** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:20 pm

Void Main wrote:
X11 wrote:Well, that link about package format further concludes that Solaris is CRAP,
I am pretty sure I told you this when you were looking at that sparc box. I'm not a fan either and I've had to deal with it quite a bit over the last 10 years. Fortunately Linux now gets first choice whenever something new goes in.

Yeah, it is running gentoo now and it is very very nice. Only I am constantly finding problems with some programs that either: contain i386 asm or are little endian only. However I must say it runs quite nicely.