Anyone who claims that an advantage Linux has over Windows is the avoidance of DLL Hell has clearly never run up against package dependencies. Imagine if the newest version of A needed a newer version of B, but the newer version of B needs the newest version of C, but the newer version of C needs the older version of A and a newer version of D… makes you want to rip your hair out.

(This rant brought to you by OpenSSH 3.3, which took me waaaaaay more time than necessary to get installed today.)

Comments

Well, a pedantic person (you know, someone other than me) might note that package dependencies aren’t a problem for Linux, per se, but rather Red Hat and its descendants. Debian’s dpkg package system does not run up against this problem.

Doesn’t make it any less frustrating of course, but…

• Posted by: Bill Stilwell on Jun 24, 2002, 2:40 AM

Yeah, I know, but I’ve been a Red Hat user for so long that I don’t know if I can train my brain to know where config files and binaries are on another distribution! Alas…

• Posted by: Jason Levine on Jun 24, 2002, 11:50 PM

I’m… well, the kind of geek who got so fed up with RPM dependencies that I broke down and started installing Linux from scratch for all of my new machines. It’s a lot more work going in, but what you get out of it is a machine you know inside and out, configured only the way you want it to do the things only you want it to do.

• Posted by: Karel P Kerezman on Jul 5, 2002, 4:12 PM
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