Do we need this crap on LWN? [LWN.net]

Do we need this crap on LWN?

Posted Feb 22, 2007 13:35 UTC (Thu) by ofeeley (guest, #36105)
In reply to: Do we need this crap on LWN? by markc
Parent article: ESR's goodbye note

"One of the reasons this won't happen is because of rpm
fanboyism, as you have clearly demonstrated, so "we" shall remain a
fragmented group of fanboys."

It's a pity you ruined an interesting post with a personal attack. I don't think that asking for particular information as to the specific advantages of a system that I'm largely unfamiliar with, and correcting your mistaken impression that there are few rpm packages is fanboyism. I agree that a single packaging format would be useful in terms of reducing apparently duplicated effort.

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Do we need this crap on LWN?

Posted Feb 22, 2007 14:13 UTC (Thu) by markc (subscriber, #4419) [Link]

> It's a pity you ruined an interesting post with a
> personal attack.

Thanks for pointing that out, I'll try and keep a more impersonal
perspective in the future. I don't often get involved in threads like
this. To clarify the kernels involved in the personal experiences I
quoted...

>> FWIW, I can only speak from personal experience.
>> I inherited control of a CentOS 3.6 vhost and was
>> told on some Plesk forums it was not possible to
>> upgrade to CentOS 4.3 (me gobsmacked).

This was a dedicated host with a kernel that probably came default with a
CentOS 3.6 install.

>> I recently got a VPS with Debian 3.1 installed,
>> within 2 weeks I upgraded it to Ubuntu Dapper then
>> on to Debian Etch (v4) then back across to Ubuntu
>> Feisty (because Debian doesn't have a nanoweb
>> package) with zero manual intervention.

This was indeed a recent experience on a Virtuozo VPS with a 2.6.9 kernel.

>> I have one box that has been up for 464 days
>> and started with a Debian Sarge 2.6.12 devfs
>> enabled kernel and now runs a Ubuntu Dapper
>> udev enabled system, on the same kernel,
>> without a reboot.

This one, I think, is a custom rolled kernel with devfs compiled in and I
happened to include CONFIG_SYSFS=y. Ah, I see, if I rebooted on this same
kernel then I may have problems, however, the kernel and grub settings
installed by Ubuntu Dapper would bring up a newer 2.6.15 kernel.