Whats the difference between Debian and Mandrake Based distros?

[DarkPenquin]

I currently use Mint 9 KDE. I have only been a linux user for about 2 weeks. I am thinking of trying PCLinuxOS but it's based on Mandrake whereas Mint is a version of Ubuntu and is based on Debian.

Whats the difference? Will the functionality I got used to be different? Will PCLinuxOS still support all the apps I can download from Synaptic that have are deb file extensions?

Are there things I can do in one that I cannot do in the other and visa versa?

What's the pros and cons?

[rokytnji]

PCLinuxOS 2010 was built from the ground up using the packages in our repository. The packages in our repo may be original creations but may also contain repackaged and modified packages from Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva. PCLinuxOS packages may also contain patches from Ubuntu, Debian, PLD and Charka. The PCLinuxOS team would like to thank these distributions who may have indirectly contributed to the PCLinuxOS distribution

supportWhat can I do with PCLinuxOS?


Everything you do with that other OS you can do with PCLinuxOS.

Internet tools : PCLinuxOS comes with a complete internet suite for surfing the net, sending and receiving email, instant messaging , blogging , tweeting and watching online video.

Photos: Edit photographs, upload and mange your photo collections with GIMP and Picasa software applications.

Music and Video: Listen, organize and stream mp3 music from your desktop. Sync your mp3 player with your music collection. Listen to streaming internet radio. Watch Youtube videos. Watch TV shows and movies online as well as DVDs. Design DVD slide shows and more. PCLinuxOS is a full multimedia operating system.

Productivity: Open Office allows you to edit documents, create presentations, work on spreadsheets, graphics and is available in many languages. Installation is easy through our GetOpenOffice utility.

I don't run rpm based distros because of personal preference is all. From what I have heard on other forums though. PCLOS is a very nice and polished Distro.
Boot up and run live and see is all I can say about it.
About PCLinuxOS PCLinuxOS

[DarkPenquin]

Thanks. I did try the live cd. It looked good but I don't know what some key differences are.. whats RPM based mean? As opposed to - ? Those kind of nuts and bolts are what I wanna know.

Sure it's got versions of all the types of programs I may want, but will all apps I could Dl through any repository work in it? - Or are some repos just for certain systems?

BTW, saw your sig. I am a big E-Bike fan.

[rokytnji]

- Or are some repos just for certain systems?

Pretty much it in a nutshell. I run AntiX and Ubuntu. AntiX runs on debian repositories. Ubuntu runs on Ubuntu repositories. If I add a Ubuntu repository to AntiX. I will break it. Same for adding Debian repositories into Ubuntu. Now these are both apt-get based distros. Yet are not compatible even though both are based on Debian.

Hope you get the Idea from that. Like adding OpenSuse repositories or Fedora repositories will break a PCLOS install and visa-versa.

To give you another idea about the differences between rpm and apt distros is like when downloading skype (if not in your repository)
Skype Download for Linux - Download the latest features on Skype

See how there is one download for Ubuntu. Another for Debian. Another for Fedora. Good thing about Linux Mint is. If it fits your release version of Linux Mint. The Ubuntu download version that matches will work in Mint. But the Fedora Version (and since I don't run a rpm disto. I can't swaer to this if it is true) may not work in Pclos. But PCLOS probably has skype in it's repositories via synaptic anyhows.

[DarkPenquin]

O.k. I got you..I think.. so most of the time the repos that are made to work with that distro will have versions of the same or that is to say, popular applications.. it's just the delivery and install system that is different.

What do you do when you find a program that is not offered by a repo and want to use it?...

I assume,
Learn to compile it for your machine from the source code? If so.. will this always solve the problem?

What's your personal reasons for not liking to run an rpm distro?

[hazel]

whats RPM based mean? As opposed to - ? Those kind of nuts and bolts are what I wanna know.

It has to do with how software is installed and updated. All Linux distros have a package manager which downloads software packages from that distro's official repositories and installs them on your machine.

The packages have to be in a format that the package manager understands. Mandrake-derived distros like Fedora, CentOS and PCLinuxOS use yum and their packages are in rpm format. Debian and Debian-based distros like Ubuntu and Mint use apt and require deb packages.

[reed9]

What do you do when you find a program that is not offered by a repo and want to use it?...

I assume,
Learn to compile it for your machine from the source code? If so.. will this always solve the problem?

The difference between rpm and deb is mostly technical and not particularly pertinent to the end user. If you plan to build packages, the difference become more interesting.

PCLinuxOS has taken the unusual step of utilizing APT, Debian's package manager, tweaked for use with rpm packages. (At least as I recall they use rpm packages still, yes?) The package manager, though is != to the package format.

Regardless, you don't want to mix packages from different distros even if they are the same packaging format. As a general rule, don't install an rpm from Fedora to Mandriva or PCLinuxOS or OpenSuse, don't use Debian packages in Ubuntu and vice versa, and so on.

You don't even want to mix packages from different versions of the same distro, ie, you shouldn't (again general rule) use an Ubuntu 9.04 package in Ubuntu 10.04.

There are a number of reasons for this, different distros might install to different locations or otherwise make custom tweaks, and, the big one, different packages will depend on different libraries or versions of libraries and this is where you can upset the whole ecosystem of your software. (There is a web of interdependencies in Linux, which saves on system resources, but can break your system if you tweak it too much.) It is the perpetual challenge of rolling release distros like PCLinuxOS or Arch to maintain the whole package ecosystem while constantly updating to the latest stable releases of software. Of course, some software is much much safer than others to upgrade. Kernels, not safe. Firefox, pretty safe.

If a package does not exist in your distro's official repositories, there are often trusted third party repos that might have it. This should generally be your first choice. I don't know how it works with PCLinuxOS, but Mandriva, for example, has the Penguin Liberation Front repo.

Ubuntu has the most unofficial packages, probably, due to their system of Personal Package Archives, or PPAs. However, these are mostly unregulated, so you should be careful trusting just anyone's PPA. Still, there are projects that maintain official PPAs, like oh, mediainfo off the top of my head.

If, however, no trusted build exists for the app you want, then yes, you're left building it yourself. Which can be quick and easy for some things, or an incredible investment of time and frustration for more complicated things. There may be libraries you need to update, which again, could break other programs, you may need to rebuild those others against the new library, and all in all it can be a huge pain. (Mostly that isn't the case though.)

Another downfall of compiling your own software is that the package manager cannot track it. This can make upgrading or removing the software troublesome. Ideally, you would learn to build packages yourself in this case, or, and I'm not sure it works with PCLinuxOS, use a tool like checkinstall, which creates a quick and dirty package and replaces the make install command when compiling.

[rokytnji]

What's your personal reasons for not liking to run an rpm distro?

Bad personal experience with Mandriva urpmi for me. But that was back a while ago with Mandriva 2008.

[DarkPenquin]

Thank you all for your answers! You have straightened me out nicely. I no longer am leery of distros made with different bases.