Dual-Booting 2 Linux Distro's: Package Sharing?

[SL6-A1000]

Hi,
I am considering dual-booting 2 different linux distributions, my current Scientific Linux, with another distro, most likely Debian, Oracle, Gentoo, or OpenSuse, in order to hopefully gain the package updates of both distro's and interchange them between each other.

My first question is, is it possible to do this? By creating a shared drive/ folder separate from the main partitions (Home, Root, User) for the packages.

and,

Secondly how would one go about extracting those packages to transfer them to the other distro, or making those packages available from within that distro's OS?

[Irithori]

If you are talking about packages as in: rpm or deb,
then no: these are not interchangeable between different linux distributions.

If you would have multiple machines with one linux distribution (e.g. CentOS)
then you can run your own package repository.

A own package repo makes sense, if
a) your internet line is slow
b) or your internet line is expensive
c) or you want/need to have self created packages

Still, each system needs to pull and install its package updates on its own.

[SL6-A1000]

Correct me, if i am wrong, but what you are suggesting is like a package server, were one machine downloads the updates for that distribution and uploads it to a shared location (i.e. drive) where all the other machines could then download those updates?

Excuse my ignorance, but why could that not be possible for multiple distributions on one machine?

Aren't the package formats RPM, DEB, etc just the casing in which the kernel recognises the contents of that package & configures it accordingly.

So for example: if you were to take the application GIMP and decompile the RPM package, leaving it as just the core components of GIMP, could you not then recompile those same components into a DEB package and install it on a DEB distro?

[Irithori]

Usually each linux will use the distribution specific repos in the internet.
So, if you have e.g.: 10 debian machines, then updates will be downloaded (ca) 10 times.

Which doesnt matter too much if you have a flatrate and a fast connection,
but a own repo would download the packages once and the 10 machines would then be configured to download from that.
Hence saving bandwidth.

deb and rpms are far from being only containers like a zip would be.
They contain dependencies, pre and post install scripts, etc.
and are designed for specific distributions.

So no: You cannot easily interchange them.

PS: the kernel has nothing to do with that, instead a package manager is used.

[SL6-A1000]

Ok, kool.

One last question:
I know derivetives of the same distribution can use the same packages, like Fedora, CentOS, RHEL & SL are all compatible with their rpms.

And Oracle Linux says that they are also compatible with RHEL RPMs, so then by all means, the assumption that sharing packages between RHEL & Oracle Linux should be possible?

Like what you are suggesting with 10 machines?

Or have i totally missed the mark?

[Irithori]

The 10 debian machines were just an example.

CentOS, RedHat, Oraclelinux and ScientificLinux are very close to each other, so RPMs from each might work on each other.
But I would still recommend to stick to the native repos, at least for the OS itself.
This will ensure, that the update paths work.

3rd_party RPMs created for RedHat are usually safe to install on CentOS, etc as well.


Fedora is the testlab for redhat to check new versions, new apps, new structures.
You *will* face issues if you try to install fedora RPMs on e.g. a centos.

[SL6-A1000]

Thanks, improves my understanding.

Ashame that their isn't a way to cross-over the different package managers, would be incredibly useful for security updates.

[nplusplus]

About the closest you would be able to get for what you described would be to build the shared packages from source and specify the installation directory during build time to install into a shared partition, say /opt.

[Mudgen]

Ok, kool.

One last question:
I know derivetives of the same distribution can use the same packages, like Fedora, CentOS, RHEL & SL are all compatible with their rpms.

And Oracle Linux says that they are also compatible with RHEL RPMs, so then by all means, the assumption that sharing packages between RHEL & Oracle Linux should be possible?

Like what you are suggesting with 10 machines?

Or have i totally missed the mark?

If you mix packages from various rpm distributions, you may find yourself in dependency hell, as can also happen even when using multiple 3rd party repos intended for the same distribution.

[SL6-A1000]

About the closest you would be able to get for what you described would be to build the shared packages from source and specify the installation directory during build time to install into a shared partition, say /opt.

So how do you specify the directory when building from source. I normally just do:
1. ./configure
2. make
3. make install

If you mix packages from various rpm distributions, you may find yourself in dependency hell, as can also happen even when using multiple 3rd party repos intended for the same distribution.

Yeah, I understand that it would cause dependency problems. But the idea would be to use packages that primarily aren't found in both distro's or packages with noarch that can install & find all dependencies in one distro but not the other, except on a few occasions where there might be a good security tool.

A prime example in my case is abiword, my current SL6 while i can ./configure the source, i cannot execute the command "make" & "make install" for the package, despite being able to do it in other cases, or if i download the RPM from fedora or one of the other RPM related distro's (matching the kernel & so forth), I cannot install the package because SL6 does not have a majority of its dependencies to build.