Re: [vox-tech] Re: newbie now having trouble with pico

[Matthew Holland <mdholland@uMAPScdavis.edu>]

Bill Kendrick wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 07:07:33PM -0800, Matthew Holland wrote:
>
> > For example, searching for "pico" doesn't 
> > get you the Mandrake rpm, but if you search for "/usr/bin/pico" you'll 
> > find that it's provided by the pine package for Mandrake.
> Oy! <:^(  Yeah... THAT's intuitive.
>
>
>   "I need program XYZ"
>
>   "Well, search this website for the file /some/junk/xyz"
I agree that it's not ideal, but it does work, and if you're looking for 
program xyz, it will probably be installed in /usr/bin/xyz, especially 
if it is something standard like pico.

> Note: I'm not dissing you or your useful suggestion, Matt.
> I'm just whining about the state of user-friendliness for Linux users
> in general.  (As in, why can't RPMFind figure that out when you search for
> the text 'pico' to begin with!?)
Well, let's put the blame where it's due.  Rpm is clearly not the best 
package manager out there.  And AFAIK, rpmfind.net is not supported 
directly by any of the rpm-based distros.  They're doing a service, but 
not perfectly.  The distros seem more concerned with writing front-ends 
like KPackage than extending the abilities of rpm itself, and it's 
pretty clear that rpm has been surpassed by other package managers such 
as apt.

I had heard something about RH including some improved package 
management in 8.0, but I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure about it. 
 Another possibility I'm aware of is rpmfind (the program), but 
unfortunately last time I tried it, it didn't Just Work.

I guess the real message is that package management is complicated, and 
making it better is probably more important than the slick desktops that 
Red Hat and Mandrake seem to be most concerned with.

Matt

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