Subject: Re: 3 Lisps, 3 Ways of Specifying OS From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 11:01:53 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3212737311524746@naggum.net> * Rajappa Iyer <rsi@panix.com> | In other words, no matter what you do under /usr/local, /usr does not get | affected. For Debian, this is not true. I am so relieved to see that you have no idea what you are talking about. Debian does not place any packages in /usr/local. If you now blame the package system for its ability to require packages or versions you have not instaleled, you need to ask yourself whether you actually asked for the right package for your system or went for that bleeding edge version. If you did the latter, the problems you will run into are not caused by any package system whose goal is to maintain sanity on your system: You have brought the insanity. If the system actually _survives_, but needs packages _outside_ of the distribution, which _you_ have to tell it how to get from somewhere else, that is a credit to its design. Surviving abuse by idiots is a good thing. Having said idiots not grasp this is unfortunately the downside of not causing idiots to harm themselves when they do really stupid things. That way, they never learn, but if they get hurt, they tend to blame the wrong guy, anyway, so maybe the only solution is to reject idiocy outright, but this generally gets in the way of the work of intelligent, careful people. | You could install an application package A (that would normally go into | /usr/local in FreeBSD) which requires an upgrade to libc or libtermcap or | ld.so (all of which have happened to me.) And from where would you get this package and the upgraded versions? _NOT_ from the Debian archives for the release you have installed. You _must_ have tweaked /etc/apt/sources.list to get the behavior you fault the distribution for. This is typical of people who lack relevant clues. | In other words for, say, FreeBSD 4.3, you can definitively state the | version numbers of various libraries whereas for, say, Debian 2.2 it | depends on the exact mix of packages that have been installed. You are factually wrong on this count. Please demonstrate the situation you have observed and falsely accuse Debian of having caused, so maybe somebody who pays attention to the details you have ignored can explain back to you why you have made up your mind about blaming the wrong guy. | FUD implies a vested interest. I have none. Then stop presenting false accusations. Failure to do so _constitutes_ an agenda. And anyone who _had_ vested interests would say he had none. | <standard Erik rant snipped> Geez. How mature. But it appears that the standard Rajappa Iyer rant is one of lying and false accusations. We shall remember this and not give you a chance to change or improve because you do not grant that to others. The number of FreeBSD "advocates" who need to falsely accuse various Linux systems of problems they do not in fact have, is alarming. I am not sure what cause this need to lie and misrepresent the competition is, but it colors my impression of FreeBSD that so many of its adherents need to engage in such tactics to make FreeBSD appear an alternative for people who do stupid things and do not realize their culpability. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. -- Richard Hamming