Rock Linux 2.0 released [LWN.net]

Rock Linux 2.0 released

Posted Mar 10, 2004 7:55 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670)
In reply to: Rock Linux 2.0 released by jamesh
Parent article: Rock Linux 2.0 released

Debian predates Red Hat, so that would be the other way around. Why Red
Hat chose to make an (at the time) inferior package format has always
been a mystery to me. Perhaps it is as you say, what marketing would call
"brand recognition".

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Rock Linux 2.0 released

Posted Mar 10, 2004 10:27 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

Maybe I was a bit provocative, but it wasn't intended as a troll.

All the .deb using distros have similar or identical packaging policies, so you just don't see the same sorts of problems as happen with RPM based distros (eg. when a new user tries to install a SuSE package on Mandrake and things fail because packages are named differently or split differently).

If mutually incompatible package collections existed for the .deb format, people would have similar problems with those systems. Of course, I can't prove this because there incompatible package collections don't exist (at least, not the level of incompatibility seen between RPM based distros).

By inventing another packaging format, Rock Linux also side steps this problem.