[TriLUG] What's the Fairest Distro of All?

[Alan Porter]

> 1) Can I just use any Fedora Core 3 packages I find for
 > RHEL/CentOS 4?

Fedora and CentOS may be a special case here, but be careful about
mixing packages from different distributions.  Just because they
are packed using RPM does not mean that they work on any other
system that uses RPM.

Some distro's have their own directory standards, and they alter
their packages to adhere to their own standards.  For example,
Debian puts network stuff in /etc/network where Red Hat uses
/etc/sysconfig/networking.

I would need to be very careful about taking a Red Hat RPM and
(converting to a .deb using 'alien') installing it on a Debian
system.  If the package were simple, it might work OK.  But if it
referenced something in /etc/sysconfig/networking or any other
Debian-specific directory, it would not work.

Although my example is a bit extreme, the same thing applies to
installing Mandrake RPM's on a Red Hat system, or just about
any other combination.  Make sure the two targets are close
cousins.


Alan