I was forced to update from 8.0 Prof to 8.2 Prof. I fear that at some time in
the future I will be forced to upgrade to 9.x or do a full install if not.

Now I wonder if it is possible to switch my running system to another
distribution. I would prefere gentoo as it seems to use this apt-get mechanism
for updating specific packages.

1.) Is this possible, or is it possible to use apt-get under Suse (I guess
yes, but how)
2.) Is this apt-get any different/better than Suses You?
3.) Is there any ohter method to keepr your system up to date that I'm not
aware of which is better then apt-get and YOU?

I'm not really satsified with YOU because it gave me outdated packages and was
not exactly stable, so I wonder if apt-get is YOU for gentoo?

What I don't want is a tool like YOU or Windows Update which does evcerything
even though I don't want it. What I want is that I can tell the mechanism to
i.e. update KDevelop and all dependencies but leave everything else as it is.

--
Gerhard Gruber
Maintainer of
SoftICE for Linux - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pice
Fast application launcher - http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchmenu

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 22:38:12 +0100, Gerhard W Gruber staggered into the
Black Sun and said:
That'll probably happen.

Switching distros typically requires reinstallation. If you were smart
and set things up so that your /usr is separate from your /home , just
move everything you want to save.

Gentoo uses "portage", a twist on the BSD Ports system. apt-get is a
Debian thing.

Google "apt4rpm" "urpmi".

apt-get is Debian-specific. It downloads binary packages from "stable"
(old, practically unusable), "testing" (newer, mostly usable), or
"unstable" (really new, can break easily) Debian mirror sites. portage is
Gentoo-specific. It downloads source code and compiles it all on your
machine, with optimization settings you specify. It works, and works
well, but you really need a fast net drop and at least a PIII-900 with
256M for best results.

You can install Gentoo from the 2-CD set they provide; this is well
optimized for your choice of {Pentium/486,PII/Athlon/Duron,PIII,PIV,
Athlon XP} but upgrades will take forever if you've got a slow CPU.

Nope, apt-get is Debian's package management system.

portage can do this; "emerge kdevelop". kdevelop depends on kdebase and
kdelibs, though, so it'd take a couple of hours to compile. FWIW, when
I used SuSE, I had problems with KMail crashing unexpectedly at times.
Gentoo's builds of KDE applications have been rock solid. HTH,

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

On 3 Dec 2003 21:56:12 GMT wrote Dances With Crows
<danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@usa.net> in comp.os.linux.misc with
<slrnbssmbg.k7c.danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@samantha.c row202.dyndns.org>

I like Suse, but what I hate about it, ist that you are either be forced to
make every upgrade or do a full install if you skip several releases. As I
don't buy each and every releas, only (at most) once a year) I would hate to
do a full install again.

Yeah. That's the problem. I have been using my system nor for more than a year
and it's pretty settled in. I don't want to do a full install because then I'm
sure that half of what I did is missing then because I have forgotten about
it.

I'm not so sure if I should use Debian. Its just a hunch but I would lean more
to gentoo.

That wouldn't really be a problem. I usually do this anyway. Normally I
download all the tar balls and compile them myself, so this is not an issue.
Of course downloading an entire linux and compiling it would probably take
longer than I like it. The speed of the connection is not that much of a
problem. I have DSL and a 2GHz machine with 1GB RAM.

Do I have to do full upgrades or can I select which packages I would like to
upgrade (including dependencies of course)?

Yes. I meant if apt-get is just the same thing like YOU is for Suse.

OK. this furthers my hunch for gentoo. KDevelop was just an example. I can
live with it if it takes some time. After all I can let it run overnight and
after work next day it should be finished.

When I switch to gentoo is this a complete setup like i.E. Suse or do I have
to configure the entire system by hand? I would like to avoid this. That's
what I like about Suse. It gives you an easy install for the initial setup and
after that I can maintain it myself. The only thing I don't like is as I said
above the upgrade policy.

How well does gentoo handle upgrades over very old versions? Will these be a
problem? For example when I have a system running KDE2 and now KDE is already
up to 3.x. and most probably it is quite different from what it was back then,
does it work also for things like that? What happens to the old version? Do I
collect dusty files with no use just because I don't know they are not used
over time? That's another issue. When I upgrade I usually don't need the old
version around (except with kernels for some testing purposes) so I would hate
to waste diskspace for i.e. the older files or libraries from KDevelop when
they are no longer used (Or any other lib for that matter). How is this
handled when I make a jump over a very old version to the most current?

--
Gerhard Gruber
Maintainer of
SoftICE for Linux - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pice
Fast application launcher - http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchmenu

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 22:38:12 +0100, Gerhard W. Gruber <sparhawk@gmx.at> wrote:

you can't 'update' suse to gentoo - you'll have to do a fresh
install of gentoo.

The Advanced Package Tool for SuSE
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/
fou4s - Fast OnlineUpdate for SuSE
http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/

.... about the same, diff interface

..... i've never experienced this issue
..
--
/// Michael J. Tobler: motorcyclist, surfer, skydiver, \\\
\\\ and author: "Inside Linux", "C++ HowTo", "C++ Unleashed" ///
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second
myth of management is that success equals skill. - Robert Heller

On Wed, 03 Dec 2003 23:23:25 +0100, Gerhard W Gruber staggered into the
Black Sun and said:
If you start from stage 3, building everything (X and KDE and mozilla
and all) takes a little under a day on an AthlonXP 2000 with 1G.

Like I said before, you can upgrade a single package with "emerge
$PACKAGE", or upgrade everything with "emerge world", and you can use
the -p option with either command to see the exact list of what portage
will build.

Roughly, yes, but apt-get is more widely used and more reliable.

You have to configure some things (Samba, Apache, Postfix, etc.) before
using them, but the configuration files as supplied by the default
builds are well-commented and easily modifiable. (Or "emerge webmin" if
you like that.) The biggest change may be the non-SysV runlevel scheme
that Gentoo uses; the start scripts for various services are all in
/etc/init.d/ like normal, but you're supposed to use "rc-update add
$SCRIPT $RUNLEVEL" instead of making symlinks in /etc/rc.d/rcN.d/ .

Have you read the x86 installation guide on the Gentoo website? Go do
that; it'll answer a lot of your questions.

The longest I've ever gone between runs of "emerge sync && emerge world"
was a month, so I don't really know how this would work.

KDE 1 -> KDE 2 was a big change. KDE 2 -> KDE 3.1 is much smaller from
the end-user's perspective. I've had no problems upgrading KDE.

# Setting in /etc/make.conf
# Clean out old versions of packages after every successful merge.
# set to "yes" or "no".
AUTOCLEAN="yes"

If AUTOCLEAN is set to "yes", old files are removed when the new files
are merged.

--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com / Hire me!
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

On 4 Dec 2003 14:39:44 GMT wrote Dances With Crows
<danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@usa.net> in comp.os.linux.misc with
<slrnbsuhir.pu1.danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows@samantha.c row202.dyndns.org>

Not yet, but I will do that.

Thanks for all your answers.

--
Gerhard Gruber
Maintainer of
SoftICE for Linux - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pice
Fast application launcher - http://sourceforge.net/projects/launchmenu