bjoernvold.com

This is the new Application manager from Mandriva. It might change the name to package manager.


Looking good.

There's a lot of critical feedback on the Mandriva Blog but I'm still in wait and see mode.
Looks to me like changes are large, this time around, and there's likely to be some rough sailing ahead.

Still, there is some evidence of people working hard on the new vision, so I hope for the best.

No more urpmi <packagename> and urpme <packagename>?

I think this is just the new gui. I follow cooker ml and haven't seen any talk of urpm* disappearing. Jeff Johnson, a rather abrasive genius-type developer of RPM, was on the list for a while and there has been a lot of discussion about different directions for package management. However, I don't get a vibe that RPM or the urpm* extensions are going away any time soon.

Sorry, didn't meant that seriously. It was a sarcastic remark towards GUI/"Let's be windows" in general.

Oh, I see. I don't much use or like the gui. Right now, I'm trying to find a usb drive (flash drive) iso that can save the settings and software I install to it (persistent). MIB had something like that and I might look into it. Puppy has always been that way but seems a little particular wrt the software package, which could be installed as debs. Kubuntu 10 has a cd image that handles persistent and I've been thrashing with that. Ubuntu 11 has some bad reaction, so it's not for me, right now. The gui software management is what I have to use in Kubuntu, not knowing my way around the debian commands. It is pretty nice, simple, intuitive, better than rpmdrake, perhaps but I'm thinking some of the software choices I'm used to in Mandriva are not there. I'm just trying to get a live usb stick/CF card thing going that I can install tethering software on for GF's Android HTC Evo or her nephew's Blackberry Style or both. I've got Barry on there, now, will try it out later.

rolf wrote:Oh, I see. I don't much use or like the gui.

<snip>

The gui software management is what I have to use in Kubuntu, not knowing my way around the debian commands. It is pretty nice, simple, intuitive, better than rpmdrake, perhaps but I'm thinking some of the software choices I'm used to in Mandriva are not there.

Not into the GUI either. Never liked it in the old days either much (MCC).

IIRC there is a urpm* command that prints out a list of software installed, but don't remember what it was. You might. I'm not on an MDV system any more to look at man urpmi. It may not back up the software installed itself, but would give you a list so you know what to install "next time around".

Debian commands:

http://tangosoft.com/refcard/

Code: Select all

svn checkout svn://svn.debian.org/svn/ddp/manuals/trunk/refcard

OR, alternatively, pick this up:
http://tangosoft.com/refcard/refcard-en-a4.pdf

Debian Tutorial - (see "File Tools" and "16.5 Using dpkg manually")

Once you're fairly proficient at it, you may want to check out LMDE. I really like it (and am not much of a debian person in general)

is always available too.

Oh, edit: For the packages that are not there that are in MDV, there are alternative repos to get those from, for Kubuntu, Debian, Arch, or any distro for that matter. You might want to check into installing alternate repos.

I will be quite honest and blatant in saying, after having run MDV for so long, that there really isn't anything it has that other distros don't (other than MCC, which wasn't all that great, at least to this kid, anyway).

Re: "I'm trying to find a usb drive (flash drive) iso that can save the settings and software I install to it (persistent)." I was also just reminded (although I can't recall what it was called) that there is a way to make an install disc that copies an already installed MDV system. You might remember that one, also. (This reminder was courtesy Joste.)

Edit again: I also know that Per Oyvind had a long-running battle on rpm5, and finally won. *shrug
Thought that was a good thing.

Thanks for the references, I'll take a look. There was a forum discussion where some buntu users were saying you could do more with apt and family than rpm tools. Over 11 years, I've gotten pretty familiar with urpmi and rpm. I've spent some time with the debian package management commands and manuals and had a very specific question about what could be done with urpmq and urpmf for querying the rpm database that I couldn't see how to do with apt. Maybe there wasn't a way or maybe they just didn't know.

Linux Standards Base used rpm as the standard for package management. I've seen some recent comments that suggest LSB might just be a paper tiger. I'm impressed with RPM, additionally with urpmi, with what it does and what it might be developed to do, listening to Per Olvynd and Jeff Johnson talking about rpm5, now in cooker. So, I hope I can use those tools for my computing needs, not have to learn something else. There are choices and that's a good thing.

rpm -qa #lists all the installed packages

rpm -qa --last #same list ordered from most recent backwards in time

rpm -qa --last|less #when piped through a pager, a controllable scrollable list

GMTA re: Per Oyvind. lol.

Thought you'd remember those.

Oh! That's right! That's what it was!


*I think*? Trying it on Fedora now. It's working on it.

Edit: Yup, that did it.

Rolf your rpm commands could very well defend a place in the tips and tricks section under rpm "tips and tricks" or something?
And regarding LMDE that dedanna recommends - I had a look at it a while ago.
There is no denying the Suse look and feel, but that does not have to be negative. Also; if you are considering a transfer to another system than rpm why not give Chakra a try. The have a lot of the old KDE guys working for them and they seem to know what they are doing. It should be very stable once you have set it up. Well Arch is - and Chakra won't be "rolling" as fast.

Now lemme se if I can get Per Øivind in here to give some RPM tips too - he sure could do some more forum work....