What Package System do you prefer.

[fingal]

I just use urpm at the moment, but I've used apt a few times. I found urpm useful last night when I compiled K3b from source (it's a long story). I used it to install a lot of development packages. As a result a friend of mine will be getting a couple of free CDs.

[bigtomrodney]

I think a lot of the structure is irrelavent these days. The old rpm vs. deb arguments are probably obsolete - more important would be apt-get vs. urpmi vs. yast vs. yum but even then....

...It doesn't matter. Managers like SMART blur the lines anyway when it comes to repository type. What I'd like to see is more uniformity in package names so that distros can share packages. As it is distros really only differ in configuration and artwork so why not make the building blocks a bit smarter? We could fix the dependency checks to work on any platform if the names were smarter.

libdbus1...dbus-lib...dbus1...dbus-base....You get the idea.

[fingal]

I think a lot of the structure is irrelavent these days. The old rpm vs. deb arguments are probably obsolete - more important would be apt-get vs. urpmi vs. yast vs. yum but even then....

...It doesn't matter. Managers like SMART blur the lines anyway when it comes to repository type. What I'd like to see is more uniformity in package names so that distros can share packages. As it is distros really only differ in configuration and artwork so why not make the building blocks a bit smarter? We could fix the dependency checks to work on any platform if the names were smarter.

libdbus1...dbus-lib...dbus1...dbus-base....You get the idea.

Funny you should say that because it was a real issue for me last night.

I know that a development package might be called - for example - AnyPackage-devel, but it could equally be called libanypackage... Using that generic approach to 'guessing' the right names is what made things work out with installing K3b.

I found that some development packages had very irregular names.

So yep - I think some sort of standardisation of naming conventions would be extremely useful. Either way, having something to sort out dependencies is very useful indeed

[RobinVossen]

I think more people would like some kind of Standardisation.
But I dont think that that will happen Quickly.
Since all the Big names have to Agree on changing the Depencys to that system.
And since some of them are companys. I dont think it will happen soon..

[bigtomrodney]

Since all the Big names have to Agree on changing the Depencys to that system.

Well every time they package something (which could be as much as every day) they are defining the dependencies. What I suggest is standard naming. In the end it will result in less work.

And since some of them are companys. I dont think it will happen soon..

I don't think that would make any odds. The original idea was to share packages. Ubuntu use Debian packages - from unstable. PCLinuxOS to my knowledge use Mandriva packages. Mepis use Debian packages.

It's the distribution that is their product. The work would benefit each other if they could agree on naming. They could always choose to do all of their own packaging or just borrow from the others - but the thing is they could be interchangeable.

[Dapper Dan]

Since Arch is based on Crux, I've been thinking of trying to get pacman working on Crux. Not that I don't like the Crux ports system, in fact I love it. But pacman might come in handy for some of those harder to find packages. It may not be possible to do it but it'll be fun to try.

[RobinVossen]

It's the distribution that is their product. The work would benefit each other if they could agree on naming. They could always choose to do all of their own packaging or just borrow from the others - but the thing is they could be interchangeable.

Yea, I know about that. I was aiming at the Big Companys who host the Packages. Since They might have to rename alot of packages. I dont think everybody likes to Agree on it.

[cayalee]

i voted for debians as apt-get is my favourite so far, though my limited experience with portage and the bsd ports system tells me they have potential to be awesome as well

[budman7]

What I like to do as I install so many different distros with different package managers is to search for the package first that I wish to install.
For instance if I want to install firefox, on Gentoo, I would do
emerge --search firefox

And then find that I would have to install, not firefox, but "mozilla-firefox"
Whereas on other distros I could just install "firefox".
Or, if I could not find the exact name, I would do
emerge --searchdesc
to get the actual name.

Getting package maintainers to agree on a single name for a package, could be very difficult.
To say the least.

[Runn3r.cze]

i can't prefer anyone, because since i use linux (about half year), i've never used any other than .deb packages...