Debian/Ubuntu as cruelty? (was Re: [wellylug] ubuntu help.... & SimplyMEPIS Linux)

[Cliff Pratt]

Brent Wood wrote:
> 
> OK, the issues with the pIII. Kubuntu was the distro that seemed to
> do everything the guy wanted, & supported all his hardware out of the
> box. USB Sony minidisk, etc... Once there he wanted emacs. I opened
> the package mangler, I forget which it was, whatever Kubuntu uses, &
> searched for emacs. It found nothing.
>
Tsk, tsk, tsk. You didn't wonder *why* it didn't find the package you 
wanted?
 >
> I said I'd find the .deb files he needed, & I assumed that sticking
> them on a CD & clicking on them from Konqueror would install them
> easily.
>
So, a few seconds after installing a distribution you decide to subvert 
the packaging system.
 >
> So, I found the URL for the NZ Ubuntu repository. Opened it in a
> browser looking for a directory full of .debs. Stuffed if I could
> find any. I then searched for emacs, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, deb, debian,
> repository, etc. Still couldn't find anything. (This is unusual. I
> generally find whatever I'm looking for in a few minutes).
>
You DON'T find Debian packages that way. But if you do, it took me just 
a few minutes to find this....

http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/e/

And I wasn't familiar with the structure before I looked. I just pulled 
the URL out of sources.list and browsed around a little.
 >
> I told the guy I wasn't sure what to do, as I was unfamiliar with
> Debian based distros. I couldn't find an equivalent to
> www.rpmfind.net in a couple of minutes, so I flicked my question to
> the list, where Andrej & Jonathan gave excellent & complete replies
> that I'm pretty sure will work.
> 
There is no equivalent of rpmfind because it is not required!

Honestly! You slap on a distro, don't bother to find out about the 
packaging system ('package mangler'!!), you then try to find packages by 
a non-standard method (even for rpm-based distros you rarely have to 
'rpmfind' a package, and you rarely have to use the rpm command), then 
you blame the distro because it doesn't work the way that you expect it to!

It's highly likely that the system is not correctly configured with 
repositories correctly set, and the guy will find that he has a system 
that he can't get updates for!

Cheers,

Cliff