[wellylug] Re: Distrowars

[David Antliff]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, JP wrote:
>
> My biggest beef with Mandrake is what to do if the
> thing you want to do doesn't come 'built-in'.  At the
> installfest, for example, we were trying to install a
> PCI modem (known to work with Linux) on a new Mandrake
> system.  The Mandrake wizard thingy couldn't find a
> driver and it wasn't clear how to add one in manually.
>
> With Debian, and probably slack/from scratch distros,
> I can do so quite happily, since those systems force
> you to learn where everything goes.  Mandrake and
> RedHat seem to use non-standard locations for their
> config files, and you're always afraid of breaking
> whatever configuration engine is used by making manual
> changes.

Debian (and Redhat & Slackware too IIRC) has a package called
'checkinstall' that I used for a while - it keeps an eye on a sandbox
'make install' and builds a .deb/.rpm/.whatever for you so you can easily
reinstall or uninstall the package using your package manager of choice.
It worked really well for a while, but then the author broke it for longer
than I could be patient waiting for a fix, so I don't know the status of
it any more. Was pretty nifty back then however.

-- 
David.