some good rpm online documentation

[Ice9]

It makes a lot of sense when you put it like this Void

[Calum]

I'm not quite sure what you mean and I think you are still looking at it wrong. The real problem is that you are trying to install a Red Hat RPM on Mandrake. Just because it's an RPM doesn't mean it should install on your system. The RPM needs to be built for your distro and version. RPM, the format, is a packaging, or a box. "rpm" the command is a tool for taking what is in that box and installing it.

..............

I know a lot of people just like you who are severely frustrated because of things like this. But to me it's like a person walking into a car parts store and saying "I need a new muffler". The store clerk would ask you what the make/model/year of your car is. You wouldn't say "what's the difference, just give me a muffler, it should fit on all cars". Or maybe you would. And would you expect the car parts store to have a muffler for every make/model/year of car ever made? Again, maybe you would. But that *is* the issue. We do want to be able to get any part in any box we want. It is achievable but it will take a lot of work and coordination and the Linux world would be better for it. Or we could all just switch to Debian and be done with it.

i see what you mean. still, to a windoid, it looks messy and is fiddly to deal with, and linux is reaching the stage where it needs windoids to accept it in the next few years or it will become the next *BSD and fade into obscurity. i'll still be using it, as will many, but it would be a shame if it didn't become the dominant operating system in my opinion, as it would set a new scene in personal computing, based on much more open standards than we have had before. i am now rambling. sorry. but basically i do think some of the inconsistencies across distros could be sorted out, since we're now saying rpm should be a standard across all distros. if the LSB says rpm must be the primary package manager on the system for it to be compliant, then we have a long way to go.

If that is your hangup then I suggest picking one of those other distros that have most of the software you want. But who's fault is it that not all applications are available in every distros packaging format? Right now, the answer is the author and the user. The distro vendor picks a number of applications that they want to include and support. They just can't include everything and in fact can only include a tiny fraction of the software available to support. They only have so many resources and applications are in a wide varying degree of completeness, stability, compatibility, usefulness, etc, etc because they are written by whoever wants to write one.

i know. still, if there was one standard, people would make their package fit that standard, and maybe they would make system/machine specific rpms as well. i don't know. i take your point about all systems becoming the same one if we go down that road, but that's my point, the LSB will take us down that road.

As it stands right now popular applications that are not included by a distribution will get some volunteer somewhere to put that application into that particular distributions packaging format and made available for download (someone has to also donate the space and bandwidth to host those applications). Sure if everyone used a single distro this would become easier but who wants a single distro? Distro's want to be unique, even if it means that at some deep level they are not compatible.

agreed of course, this does not apply to those closed source apps and freeware that newbies to linux insist on using though. only yesterday i got in trouble for telling a newbie to stop using fastlynx (a 30 day share/payware windows/linux disk sharing program) and start using samba instead. he said samba was too hard and this way he knew what he was doing. what could i say? he probably knows all the arguments for open source, but he still chooses the "easy" option. anyway, my point is, windoids will be windoids, even now a lot of them use linux, and linux will have to move into a new phase of being truly idiot proof andhaving as few hidden pitfalls as possible.

The command to create binary RPMs from SRC RPMs is "rpm --rebuild xxx.src.rpm" or if you have the newest version of RPM it is "rpmbuild --rebuild xxx.src.rpm"

how odd, i was under the impression that option wasn't available in the red hat version, sorry about that, i didn't see it in rpm --help so assumed it was not there.

Contrary to popular belief all distros support both styles. Luke, you have the source. I could convert my Red Hat system to BSD style in very little time. The init processes are not large things and if you know both you could use either. Of course Red Hat only includes graphical tools for the SysV style but who uses graphical tools? People that use graphical tools could care less which init style is used anyway. I don't like the BSD style init and it's one of the many reasons I chose Red Hat as my OS of choice. It has very nice init management and is layed out just about the way I like it. And I *do* like the command line tools "chkconfig" and "service".

of course, how come i always end up agreeing 100% with you? actually i like the bsd init better, but that's because i don't know what i'm doing and the bsd init seems the easiest to learn about first and then learn about sysV afterwards. of course sysV looks more versatile. and i bet sysV is the LSB standard too.

Again, I think the issues that you refer to are not RPM issues but software repository issues. As far as whether RPM should be the standard I don't know whether I agree with that. I'm sure the Debian users would have a *huge* beef with that. Again, some people like working on autos that have their units in metric and use metrics tools because it makes sense to them and some prefer the English units. No one could argue that metric is easier unless you've been using English all your life.

while i can see why people might prefer metric measurements i do prefer imperial ones. pounds, feet, inches and pints seem somehow more real to me. still, my generation were all brought up metric and what with having an australian girlfriend (they went metric down there in the fifties so she's never been told "a litre of water's a pint and three quarters" et cetera, and couldn't tell a foot from an ounce) makes me have to think in metric sometimes.

anyway, sorry again, i am mr off topic today, again i agree. this has turned into a standards issue rather than an rpm issue. basically i am just saying that all the linuces have about ten years of forking away from each other behind them, how does the LSB think it can get them to agree on anything? on the other hand they had better agree pretty quick on more things than they do or linux will miss the boat in the battle for the hearts and minds.

sorry to go so off topic.

[Void Main]

i see what you mean. still, to a windoid, it looks messy and is fiddly to deal with,

Windoids will be windoids. Windows is messy to a windoid (but that's because Windows is messy).

and linux is reaching the stage where it needs windoids to accept it in the next few years or it will become the next *BSD and fade into obscurity.

I disagree. For one, Linux does not *need* Windoids to accept it. Maybe Red Hat, Lindows, and Mandrake incorporated would like many more Windoids to accept it but Linux itself doesn't need it. As long as we can keep companies like Microsoft from taking over content and hardware so that people like me an you can't use our open software then I could care less how many windoids use Linux. It has shown no sign of fading to this point. The last graph I saw was an exponential trend upward. Windoids will buy something like Lindows and they can call Lindows for support, and they can purchase virus software for their Linux and be just as clueless as they are on Windows now.

i'll still be using it, as will many, but it would be a shame if it didn't become the dominant operating system in my opinion, as it would set a new scene in personal computing, based on much more open standards than we have had before.

To be honest, I really don't care if it becomes the dominant OS, it would be very cool if it could rise up to about 30% and have Apple have about 25% and have Microsoft have about 20% and have all the others make up the other 25%. Life would be much better for all of the above if that were true but the users would be the real winner. They would have true choice, reasonable prices, software vendors would likely port to all three OSs, and the OS vendors would really have to play nicely or they would be OOB (out of business).

i am now rambling. sorry. but basically i do think some of the inconsistencies across distros could be sorted out, since we're now saying rpm should be a standard across all distros. if the LSB says rpm must be the primary package manager on the system for it to be compliant, then we have a long way to go.

LSB is a nice thought, sort of like POSIX is a nice thought. There would be advantages to having as many distros follow LSB as possible but there is nothing to force them to do so. They may have monitary reasons for following or not following the LSB standards (how good is Microsoft at following standards? They embrace/extend standards so no one else can talk to them and look at their market share. That's some incentive for companies like Lindows not to pay any attention to the LSB). If your disto of choice chooses not to be LSB compliant should you complain that Linux in general is a mess because applications can't be installed across all distros? And then the software you are trying to install must be LSB compliant. I'm not trying to argue and I agree that the goal of LSB is good, it's just that there isn't a lot that can be done to force anyone to comply, open source is a free world. It will always seem somewhat messy to many.

Still, if there was one standard, people would make their package fit that standard, and maybe they would make system/machine specific rpms as well. i don't know. i take your point about all systems becoming the same one if we go down that road, but that's my point, the LSB will take us down that road.

Again, I wouldn't hold my breath. :) In my opinion you are the kind of person that would use something other than an LSB standards OS. You like to go against the norm. One indicator of that is that you are even interested in Linux at all. Another indicator is you seem to like to venture into the less popular distributions. I'm not saying that's bad, in fact I applaud it, but it confuses me as to why on one hand you want standards, yet on the other hand like to use non-standard distros (standard meant more as "popular" in this instance).

he said samba was too hard and this way he knew what he was doing. what could i say? he probably knows all the arguments for open source, but he still chooses the "easy" option. anyway, my point is, windoids will be windoids, even now a lot of them use linux, and linux will have to move into a new phase of being truly idiot proof andhaving as few hidden pitfalls as possible.

You are correct. Windoids will be windoids. I am of the opinion that the Linux way currently *is* the easier way. But that's just me. :) Someone who has used Windows all of their life may not agree with me. Linux!=Windows (thankfully).

The command to create binary RPMs from SRC RPMs is "rpm --rebuild xxx.src.rpm" or if you have the newest version of RPM it is "rpmbuild --rebuild xxx.src.rpm"

how odd, i was under the impression that option wasn't available in the red hat version, sorry about that, i didn't see it in rpm --help so assumed it was not there.

Just remember what "RPM" stands for and who actually writes the rpm system. RPM stands for "Red Hat Package Manager" (actually looking at the man page it appears they have changed the name to "RPM Package Manager", I believe this was intentional so as it could become more widely used without having to blatently take so much credit). I am pretty sure that any options for any particular version of RPM will be pretty much the same across all distros that use RPM. There is a configuration file that you can modify in Red Hat (and I assume all the others) where even on the current versions of RPM you can make "rpm" accept the "--rebuild" option and not have to use "rpmbuild". If Mandrake is using the most recent version of RPM then it's likely they configured that configuration file in that way for backward compatibility. Another thing, you won't have the "rpmbuild" command in Red Hat if you don't have the rpm-build RPM installed. :)

while i can see why people might prefer metric measurements i do prefer imperial ones. pounds, feet, inches and pints seem somehow more real to me. still, my generation were all brought up metric and what with having an australian girlfriend (they went metric down there in the fifties so she's never been told "a litre of water's a pint and three quarters" et cetera, and couldn't tell a foot from an ounce) makes me have to think in metric sometimes.

Yes, me too. When I work on my car I use inches, half-inch, quarter-inch, sixteenth-inch, etc. When I work on my motorcyles I use metric. I grew up with Imperial but when you look at them side by side, metric would have been a WHOLE lot easier to learn and use. In fact I can use both pretty well today. Sort of like I can use both rpm, apt, make etc pretty much equally.

sorry to go so off topic.

I don't believe that anyone could complain for going off topic when you started the topic, certainly not I. :)

[Calum]

i agree again with all of what you just said actually. just one thing i will address:

why do i want standards when i like to use weirdo software that doesn't fit in with standards?

well specifically i am thinking of linux' image in the public (windoids') eyes. basically i want linux to be used by more people in preference to windows, and i want them not to be frightened off it when they come to it. in my opinion for this to happen, the idiot proofness must be up to the standard of the spread of awareness if you get me. the more people know about linux, the more easy it has to be for newbies or the faster it will lose out in the reputation stakes.

anyway, that's it, i agree with you, and so on! nothing more for me to say!

[Void Main]

I too wish for more people to try out and ultimately use Linux. I do believe that only a small percentage of people do not try it because they are scared of it. I believe the largest percentage of people who currently use Windows do not try or use Linux for no other reason than they don't really care what OS they use. Windows came on their computer so that is what they use. Because everyone else they know is in the same boat (using Windows because it came on their computer) why should they want to use anything else? At least that is the boat that most of the people I know are in. I have a few windoid friends who are genuinely interested in Linux.

Now there are many frustrating issues that I believe will be resolved incrementally in a give/take sort of way. It's like the chicken/egg comparison with 3rd party proprietary software for Linux (e.g. games). Game vendors have no incentive to create Linux games because they don't see it as a very big market. Linux will not become a very big market without having game vendors write their games for Linux. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Now because Linux is steadily becoming more popular eventually more and more software vendors will see it as a viable market. Eventually people will be saying "and why do I need Windows again"?. At least that's my hope, could be wrong.

If all of the above happens then all of a sudden you have a lot more people paying attention to Linux and many of the other things will get solved that you and many others see as issues. Sure there are things that would make life easier, but when I think back a few years I see how far we have come. It'll get better, be patient. If you can't be patient, pick up a programming manual. :) I've picked up many programming manuals and many times find it easier to be patient.

Now I think maybe I've gone off-topic. :)