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Comment by henning | Hacker News Reader

I think one of the most amazing things about Ubuntu/Debian is the apt-get based packaging system. Neither Mac nor Windows have anything nearly as good as that. That's its biggest advantage in my view, and if that doesn't matter to you then Linux probably isn't for you.

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You know I really do like apt, but it isn't perfect, and 'rough around the edges' isn't a bad description for it (I know he meant Ubuntu as a whole).

I've had multiple times that by using apt-get autoremove, my entire Ubuntu installation has been fubared. It is almost nicer how Windows and Mac apps ship with all the required libraries and functionality they need, and you don't have to worry about it (both as a developer and a user). Add to that the confusion where programming languages have their own package managers (should I use Python's easy_install or the .debs?) and there's even more of a mess.

I've never had any difficulties on my Mac or on Windows due to a lack of a package manager, but I have had problems using apt.

I don't understand, what advantages does using a package manager have over simply shipping an app with the libraries/programs it needs? Yeah, you save hard drive space, but with hundreds of gigabytes of data, is that even important?

I had a problem due to Windows not having a package manager. I had emacs and RCS installed, and it worked fine. Then I installed a CVS package that included the programs it needed, including RCS programs. Its version didn't work with emacs. If there were a package manager I would have been warned about the conflict.

I've been using Debian for years, and Ubuntu recently, but I had to look up autoremove; I've never used that apt-get feature. I have used autoclean, which is benign. It does sound like there are problems with autoremove that should be fixed, but for now why not just avoid that feature?

You make a really good point.

I think one advantage a package management system has is unified updates. The down side is that could cause problems when configuration file formats change. Gentoo tries to handle this by managing all config files in CVS, so you can diff different versions and merge them. Luckily, in reality, config file formats don't change all that often.

> Gentoo tries to handle this by managing all config files in CVS, so you can diff different versions and merge them.

Am I missing something? I wish it did this, but unless something has changed recently it just gives you a tool for merging updates in (and doesn't store old revisions).

Oops, I keep forgeting this is not part of portage. This is done so often that it should really be made a sensible default for any mainstream distribution.

dispatch-conf and etc-update are the two config updating tools included with gentoo's portage. dispatch-conf is the newer and preferred tool.

Be default dispatch-conf keeps a backup of your config files in /etc/config-archive. Optionally it can use rcs to track changes.

It makes finding packages easier, it makes updating them much easier and it makes removing them reliable.

It's not just about space; say somebody finds a security exploit in a widely-used library. How many copies of (eg.) libpng do you have on your system? Can you depend on every program that uses it to put out an update?

Try supporting your parents who live far away. What do you do if security wholes in several applications crop up, as was for example the case with Java, Flash and Winamp several times? How do you explain to a normal user through the phone how to update those applications, and make sure that the old versions are properly removed (which the auto-updaters that come with most applications often don't do)?

OS X has both Macports and Fink - not quite as great as apt-get but pretty close

The two or three times I've used Macports, the version of the program Macports installed was out-of-date to the point of not working at all on my machine. I just end up recompiling from source. (The last example of this was with FreeImage.)

Now just yesterday I had a problem with apt-get on Ubuntu installing a bogus version of (I think it was) Ruby Gems.

yeah I've had the same problem with stuff that isn't that popular (to me that is) - though the good part about macports and fink is that they pretty much run in a sandbox (not a true one but at least in file location) that you can reset or wipe out... not to mention it's a lot easier to find where stuff is installed

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