[ILUG] Suggestions for best 64 bit Linux distro?

[Paul Jakma]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> You said (I think it was you, anyway) that yum didn't work properly 
> in the x86_64 distribution.

Hmm, no. I said it could be dangerous.

> So what command did you give exactly which caused confusion?

glibc packages were one I remember.

> If the message was that the packages you were trying to install 
> were incompatible, that seems to me a kindness on the part of yum 
> rather than an error.

No, they were packages which both installed the same file. 
Technically a packaging error, however unfortunately yum is quite 
happy to clobber important files, because it lacks (or did lack) 
checking file conflicts between same package for different 
architectures.

Note that rpm would have complained about this, except yum trusts its 
own dependency checks (using rpmlib i think) implicitely and if that 
pans out uses --force.

Essentially, yum was (still is?) very dangerous on x86_64: any 
packaging deficiencies that cause i386 and x86_64 versions of a 
package to install the same arch dependent binary will mean yum will 
break your system to a degree. If it's an important binary, you're 
screwed. This is despite the fact that rpm would have been capable of 
catching the problem - manual use of 'rpm' would have caught the 
problem.

I decided instead to use apt. Which doesnt try to understand 
multi-arch at all, will not install same package twice, doesn't try 
to outwit rpm[1] and hence at least is safe.

1. Apt does its own dependency resolutions, if that passes it will 
try install/upgrade using rpm. However, rpm still does its own 
checks, so if it catches something wrong, it will still error out. 
Nice and robust..

> Were the packages all from official FC-4 x86_64 repositories?

Yep.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
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