[TriLUG] redhat-config-network question

[Kevin Sonney]

On 26 Feb 2003 Tanner Lovelace <lovelace at wayfarer.org> wrote:
> Cheap shot, Kevin.  Apt-rpm is *not* a fad.  It works and works well
> and people have figured that out and started using it.  The best

I've been looking at it since initial release Yes, it's cool, but I've
never gotten the warm fuzzies from it. I'm not changing my stance *ANY*
from my pre-Red Hat days. 

If you want me to make cheap shots, I can. And it'll be a lot more
blatant than that. *grin*

> Redhat can do now is to just get out of the way.  Sure, they've
> got up2date, but to me, that looks an awful lot like Windows Update,
> and anyone who read this morning's slashdot can probably see that
> putting your faith completely in the "benevolence" of big companies
> isn't really that good of an idea.

Which story? I stopped reading /. many moons ago, because the
signal/noise ratio for the information I need was a bit high. Put your
faith where you will - big company, small company, DIY. It's all about
choice. I'm presenting the choice of using up2date. 

> Free?  What about all the valuable marketing data that Redhat collects
> from the people who register with RHN?  You may say that Redhat won't

Nowhere does it say that you have to enter valid data. You don't have to
send your system info to Red Hat. It's optional. Check the code. Run
rhn_register and see for yourself. I think there are some assumptions
being made here, and I'd *LIKE* to correct them if possible without
spinning into a flame war. 

> do anything with that data, but anyone who actually believes that
> is either a) incredibly naive or b) not thinking long term enough.
> Data collected by a company never dies and what happens if Redhat
> gets bought by someone (it *could* happen, sometime) and the new
> company decides to use that data.  I'd much rather use something
> like apt4rpm or even up2date with a Current server and not give 
> redhat my information.

You take that risk with a magazine subscription, bank account, credit
card, or *ANYTHING* else with your personal information on it. It's all
about acceptable risk, right? I don't hear you yelling about using your
credit card when you and I know, with a fair amount of certainty, that
the credit card company is gathering much more intrusive data and
records than Red Hat is. With less, I might add, certainty as to how it
will be used and by whom. Same goes for a grocery store "discount" card.
Think on that for a bit.

Anyway, it's all a choice. I'm not saying "my way or else," I'm just
presenting an option and some reasons to use up2date.

> apt4rpm will resolve all the dependencies too.  And you can even do
> "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" to get all the latest errata too.
> You don't have to be locked into what redhat provides.already sold
> those, I thinkl

Correct. I never disputed that. But you *DO* have to trust the source of
the updates. Unless you verify GPG sigs on all packages (which I'm
fairly sure apt-rpm does by default, right?), there's no guarontee that
*ANY* repository is giving you valid packages. 

> Kevin, I'm not picking on you, so please don't think that, but I have

No worries. I just happened to stick my head up, so it's expected. 

> to wonder about why redhat (and mandrake too, for that matter) had
> to go off and write their own tool to resolve dependencies.  Now 

Because apt4rpm wasn't mature enough at the time. It's still, by
enterprise standards, experimental. Convince the distro maintainers to
use it, and we'll see. Prove that it can do what RHN does (hundreds of
concurrent transactions with server-side dependency resolution), and
maybe I can get someone over here to look at it. 

> we have 3 different tools that all do the same thing and people get
> confused about which one they should use.  If everyone had gotten

It's linux - it's all about choice, right? Choose the tool you like, but
know the pros and cons of your choice. Make an informed decision. And if
you want a global standard way of doing it, 

> together and worked on the same thing, that tool could have been 
> extrememly kick ass by now.  Instead, we've got fragmentation all
> over the place.  Users are not going to stand for this, any more
> than they stood for Unix fragmentation.  Sooner or later, something
> has to give, and depending on redhat's supposed "dominance" of the
> market isn't really that good of an idea.

Sounds a lot like the FUD MS spreads about fragmentation in the Linux
Market. 
"Look at all the Distros! it's bad for your company!" 
"Look at all the Package update tools! The market is fragmenting!" 

(See, *THAT* is a cheap shot *grin*)

In all seriousness, I think the multiple paths will be, long run, better 
for Linux in general, as the tools mature. At the moment, there are three 
good tools for doing package maintenance on RPM based systems. Choose 
the one you like, based on your needs. 

So, I get the impression you don't like the Red Hat *OR* Mandrake ways
of doing things? Fine. No worries. Your choice. I like up2date, I have
for a long time, and it keep getting better. You like apt4rpm, and say
the same things. Great! Open dialog is important.

-- 
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--         Kevin Sonney         --
--  ICQ: 4855069  AIM: ksonney  --
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 Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
 -- Tallulah Bankhead
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