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Gentoo Linux Rethinks Package Management System

YOU ARE SO FIRED! writes "In an effort to conform to the LSB standards, Gentoo Linux will be adopting RPM as the standard form of package management in portage 2.1. More information can be found in the Gentoo weekly newsletter. I'd surely be fired if I would've proposed such an idea!"

298 comments

  1. April fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh wait... they're serious. Damn.

    1. Re:April fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh god... not another of theses days.

      That's it, after last year I've decided I'm out of here for the day.

      April Fool's on Slashdot. Is there anything worse?

    2. Re:April fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "April Fool's on Slashdot. Is there anything worse?"

      Slashdot on a regular day?

    3. Re:April fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      April Fool's on Slashdot. Is there anything worse?

      Umm ... April Fool's Day in Basra?

    4. Re:April fools! by punkmanandy · · Score: 1
      and i quote the site:
      Note: This is an April Fool's joke.
      just a tad bit obvious.
    5. Re:April fools! by Iguanaphobic · · Score: 1

      Posted by timothy on Monday March 31, @08:33PM
      from the after-all-rpm-is-better dept.


      I'll let you know when it gets here.

      --
      Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
    6. Re:April fools! by JuddN · · Score: 1
      April Fool's on Slashdot. Is there anything worse?

      The only thing worse is www.tomshardware.com

    7. Re:April fools! by BluesForPablo · · Score: 1

      I just about had a heart attack until I read the note.

  2. First Post! by bc90021 · · Score: 2, Funny

    And a Happy April to everyone!! :)

  3. MOD +5 Troll by RLiegh · · Score: 1

    Best Torll EVA

    while I'm at it; fp!

    1. Re:MOD +5 Troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      btw, for those of you on the pipe. The "mod +5 troll" is in reference to A)the story and B)the story submitter (YOU ARE SO FIRED); NOT the post. TIA.

      -RLiegh

  4. So funny I forgot to laugh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My sides - please stop!

  5. I'm so fired?! by mewsenews · · Score: 1, Funny

    You can't fire me! I QUIT!

  6. But by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's not April 1st here yet.

  7. Uh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why would they use the Redhat Package Manager? It sucks. Really. Just look at the slashdot blurb, even they know this.

    Bad move.

    *Gentoo is dying

  8. F1rST P0st by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is an honorable mention for Georg W. Bush (Dubya) and Rt. Hon. Lt. Don Rumsfeld.

    The war is w0n!!

    all iraq base are beschlong to us.

    yerz,

    Canadian Friends of America

  9. Woo Hoo! by 0x7F · · Score: 3, Funny

    At last, we Debian users have a legitimate reason to snub Gentoo.

    Just kidding! Happy April Fools' Day everybody.

    1. Re:Woo Hoo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At last, we Debian users have a legitimate reason to snub Gentoo.

      Seriously, though, we already do...

  10. Oh No... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can I be the first to call April fools

    1. Re:Oh No... by Dan-DAFC · · Score: 1

      Can I be the first to call April fools

      No.

      --
      Suck figs.
  11. I propose by ahkbarr · · Score: 1

    that we all use RPM to manage our packages.

    Ouch! I guess I want 0 rpms for my package.

    --
    Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
  12. Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by R-2-RO · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was pissed.. Until I realized the GWN is dated April 1.. Haha... damn.. had me for a few seconds there.. Bastards! :)

    --
    Thank you. Drive through. (:wq)
    1. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by kwiqsilver · · Score: 4, Funny

      Me too, I just switched from Debian to Gentoo over the last few weeks.
      I was already forming the wording for my profanity filled forum post.

    2. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by aggieben · · Score: 1

      me too! I was in my office studying late and saw this. I was screaming "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..." and then saw that it was a joke.

      Talk about a heart attack...

      --
      Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
    3. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was already forming the wording for my profanity filled forum post.

      Down to the last braincell then? Nothing says class and style like a string of expletives.

    4. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, he's a Gentoo user. What more needs to be said?

    5. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by Shanks · · Score: 1

      Yeah. My blood pressure just went up a notch, and then... enlightenment :)

      Suckered!, and just seconds after having noticed it was april 1st :(

      --
      Sig: Sigh, can't think of a good one :)
    6. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by mindriot · · Score: 1

      Somehow I don't find stories too good if there's a green box saying "Note: this is an April Fools joke" at the top... but I guess that just proves how many slashdotters actually follow the links and read the stories ;-))

      But Editors, pleease remember: do not drown us in hundreds of April Fools jokes... last year it was getting kinda annoying. And we already have three stories up now... please make it fewer jokes, but make 'em good.

      That being said, I liked what my University's computer center did... we have a wi-fi net running on campus, on today they announced Germany-wide wireless access via the new Satellite network... very detailed prank, they put up the homepage, created the corresponding mail addresses (sukath-admin@...), and wrote a whole bunch of pages on that site I linked to... funny FAQs etc. Good job!

    7. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by kaiidth · · Score: 1

      And you know what gets me? I'm an, er, 'wissenschaftlicher mitarbeiterin' (foreign, obviously...) and I work on the NUKATH project at Karlsruhe University...

      And I didn't know anything about this April Fools' until I read it on Slashdot.

      SUKATH!!! ROTFL!

    8. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lord knows you have plenty of time to do that while you wait for emerge -u world.

    9. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by Zebidiah · · Score: 1

      You're pissed! I'd just got out of bed after a nightshift, read the headline and I completely bought it. I was going to install gentoo this Thursday and I was thinking 'why bother'. I forgot the date.

    10. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Word to that brother.

      Debian 4 life!

    11. Re:Heh.. I was pissed for a second. by silvwolf · · Score: 1

      Somehow I don't find stories too good if there's a green box saying "Note: this is an April Fools joke" at the top... but I guess that just proves how many slashdotters actually follow the links and read the stories ;-))

      I get the weekly newsletter in email and was gotten pretty good by this joke. I noticed it in my inbox around 7:30PM Monday night, east coast US time, and wasn't ready for April Fool's jokes yet. They didn't put the little blurb about it being a joke in the email. I hopped on the forums to see what people were saying, and then it hit me...

  13. April fools again... by Vrallis · · Score: 0, Troll

    Is this really a good preview of what's to come over the next 24 hours? Jeez...lame...

    April fools just gets more sad every year...

    1. Re:April fools again... by RLiegh · · Score: 1

      Actually; I would agree with you except for who submitted the story. Being accepted was probably the last thing that particular troll was expecting.

    2. Re:April fools again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, what can you expect. Gather a bunch of sweaty, pasty white, pear shaped, no life loser nerds and you are going to get sweaty, pasty white, pear shaped, no life loser nerd jokes, and all of the sweaty, pasty white, pear shaped, no life loser nerds think that the jokes are the funniest jokes EVER.

      I might have to avoid /. tomorrow. Its just going to annoy the socks off of me.

    3. Re:April fools again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I might have to avoid /. tomorrow. Its just going to annoy the socks off of me.

      Given how bad your feet stink; I can't say you'll be sorely missed.

      Truly a Dr Schols Icon!
    4. Re:April fools again... by cymen · · Score: 1

      it ... doesn't ... stop ... for ... a ... long ... time ... come ... back ... in ... 24 ... hours ... just ... a ... bunch ... of ... wankers ... damn ... april ... fools ... it ... ain't ... funny ... no ... more ... pathetic

    5. Re:April fools again... by G27+Radio · · Score: 1

      Nah, they just don't want to blow their load all at once. That's why the first one was funny and this one was kinda stupid. They will get much funnier as they go along.

      Just kidding, April Fools!

  14. RPMs are why people migrated away by Tiber · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    I can't speak for the community in general, but RPMs are the number 1 reason I started to avoid redhat. The idea that the build script et al is inside the package and kept away from the user is pretty absurd in my opinion. This was what drove me into the arms of BSD. Linux called me back for it's hardware support, but after a decision like this, I'll be hard pressed to stick with gentoo. Or, another perspective, how is this not debian, once and again?

    1. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by Trogre · · Score: 4, Funny

      hook, line and sinker.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    2. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by Cheeziologist · · Score: 1

      Wake up and smell the date

    3. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by TwP · · Score: 1

      Well, his/her/its user ID is 1e+5 greater than yours which means (s)he(it) was probably not around for April 1 last year. They'll figure it out around this time tomorrow.

    4. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firstly you are an April Fool. Secondly the fact that the build script is inside the package does not mean that it is "kept away from the user." If you want to look at it just get it out of the package for goodness sakes. Hint: The easy way is to 'install' the source RPM.

    5. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by jgp · · Score: 1

      ... rod, and copy of Angler's Times.

    6. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You actually look to User ID Number here to form a relevant opinion about someone?

      I've got more SlashDot UID's than I have EQ characters; I'm not in the minority, I don't think.

      Prolly make a good poll: "How many /. ID's do you have registered?"

      [] 5 or more
      [] 4
      [] 3
      [] 2
      [] 1
      [] Only Ever Post AC
      [] I'm Cowboy Neal!

    7. Re:RPMs are why people migrated away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      RPMs are the number 1 reason I started to avoid redhat.

      No they arn't. Admit it, you moved to Gentoo because someone told you it was l33t3r than Debian, and you're too stupid to use FreeBSD (Last years l33t OS for loosers like you). If someone told you shit was peanut butter you'd spread it on chunky bread and tell everyone it was fucking delicious.

  15. its a joke by intermodal · · Score: 0, Funny

    this isnt even convincing

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  16. More Convience For Average People by Obscenity · · Score: 1

    The Red Hat Package Manager system is convienent for those of us who are not very capable at compiling source code and the like. It provides ease of use basically, and that is the objective I think that they are trying to obtain by conforming to the .RPM standard. Sure it may not be as complicated and therefore not as geeky, but it will save the not-so-nerdy people some time, which is good because the world needs to be exposed to more Open Source Software

    --
    OMG OMG OMG WTF OMG WTF BBQ STFU RTFM, OMFG OMG OMG OMG ROFL LMAO OMG WTF STFU ROFLMAO
    1. Re:More Convience For Average People by El+Cubano · · Score: 1

      The Red Hat Package Manager system is convienent for those of us who are not very capable at compiling source code and the like

      I have to disagree with you there. I started using Linux about 6 months ago as a complete n00b. I started out on RH8.0, just after it came out. After two weeks I was about ready to throw my laptop from a moving train. Then I asked one of my buddies at school what I should do to avoid the depndency mess in Red Hat.

      He got me started on Debian. I was a bit leary at first because I'd never heard of it (I only knew about RH in the beginning). So, he helped me install it then he showed me how to use apt-get. I feel so strongly about the simplicity of apt-get over rpm now, that I would feel comfortable recommending it to anyone.

      I think it is even easier than installing windoze software at times, becuase if you have the wrong version of a library apt-get can find the correct version in the repository. Try navigating M$'s site for the right version of a DLL, or hunting down a library you need from rpmfind. It is a total waste of time.

    2. Re:More Convience For Average People by bubkus_jones · · Score: 1

      why not use the Debian package system as the standard? its implemented better, using apt. Enter one command and everything needed to install the program is downloaded and installed, no need to go hunting for various rpms of libraries that may or may not exist. or combine Gentoo's portage and Debian's Apt. This way, the user could decide whether to use a precompiled binary or the source code (where available).

    3. Re:More Convience For Average People by BHearsum · · Score: 1

      It will save people time as long as they only use apps that have RH packages. I tried getting Eterm. No official packages. I tried installing a non-distro specific package, RPM HELL. I ended up compiling it.

      Update systems like that don't work unless you can either a) You can tell people what they want, or b) You can give people what they want.

      Neither of which can be done all the time. And an RPM system is the most horrible thing to try and compile things on.

    4. Re:More Convience For Average People by kwiqsilver · · Score: 4, Informative

      1. It's a joke. (Look at the calendar. Don't believe anything you read on slashdot in the next 24 hours).
      2. You obviously know not of what you speak. RPMs are more complicated than Gentoo ebuilds or debian debs.
      With Gentoo you type:
      # emerge enlightenment
      You don't have to know anything about C, C++, Python or even shell scripting. All you have to know is your architecture and the optimizations you want (and the detailed docs are very newbie friendly).
      with debian type:
      # apt-get install enlightenment
      Either distro will then install E, X, and all required libs/programs.
      Both distros have centralized package repositories (free of charge) that contain everything I've ever needed, tested for full compatibility.

      With rpm, you find the package, download it, type the rpm command, get an error about libWhatever.X.Y.Z.so being required, spend hours figuring out what package has libWhatever.X.Y.Z.so, go to bed three hours late, because you were looking for the package, ..., get home from work exhausted the next day, look for that package, find a few rpms compiled for a different distro, architecture, gcc version, or rpm version, scream in disgust, and then switch to Debian or Gentoo.

    5. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      amen broder i mean when you want to install a simpel app like xmms who would like to use hard and complicated methods like typing emerge xmms
      and wait while evrything you need fore xmms and xmms is installed. when you can use the simplicity of rpm and download the nice rpm from rpmfind or wathever then run rpm -i xmms.yadayada.rpm to see wath other packages it needs the go back to rpmfind and download those packages and try to install them after ofcourse downloding the dependicys fore those packages.

      yepp you really hit the nail why use somthing so complicated like emerge when you can have the simplicity of rpm.

      (xmms was just used as an exampel)

    6. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      RPM HELL

      The cure for this, 7 times out of 10, is simply to lay your hands on the source RPM and compile from there.

      And an RPM system is the most horrible thing to try and compile things on.

      Huh?

    7. Re:More Convience For Average People by nick+this · · Score: 1
      How can all these people responding realize that the article itself was an April Fool's joke, but *not* realize the parent comment is a troll?

      /me sighs.

      You've all fallen victim to the April Fool's troll.

    8. Re:More Convience For Average People by borwells · · Score: 1

      emerge kde mozilla netscape-flash mplayer-plugin openoffice xmms ogle

      A fairly complete desktop install done with one command. How's that for convenient?

      --
      "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
    9. Re:More Convience For Average People by pyros · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Man. I know I shouldn't feed the trolls. But I'm sick of this. You're comparing a file format to a dependency tracking system. compare apt-get and portage to up2date for redhat. Don't even try to tell me that downloading the .deb for enlightenment and trying to install it with dpkg is any simpler than downloading the .rpm for enlightenment and installing it with rpm. dpkg won't automatically track down dependencies and install them for you. It will just fail. Just like trying to install the rpm will. 'up2date enlightenment' is just as easy to understand as 'apt-get install enlightenment' And don't give me any crap about only getting stuff from Red Hat. Anyone can set up an up2date server, just like anyone can set up an apt repository.

    10. Re:More Convience For Average People by kwiqsilver · · Score: 2, Informative

      With debian and gentoo the package format and package manager are highly coordinated.
      An rpm doesn't include a list of all rpms it requires, just libs, and neither does the rpm database.
      The ebuilds in /usr/portage contain all depenencies. I forget whether debian includes them in apt's database or in the actual deb file, but apt-get install has never failed me.
      Having some other person be able to run the server that redhat should give access to for free doesn't help. That server is pretty useless unless it's housing the latest packages all tested for integration, like debian and gentoo. And who's running it? I feel pretty safe getting files from debian.org or gentoo.org, but some_guys_home-grown_redhat.com doesn't inspire confidence in me.
      Rpm was never designed for upgrading. Redhat's idea of an upgrade is buy the next version and install it.
      A debian box can do an entire upgrade (including glibc) without having to reinstall or even reboot. The only thing that requires a reboot is a kernel upgrade, so you can run the new kernel.
      I'd suspect that gentoo can act similarly. And I'll find out when the next major revision of glibc comes out.

    11. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but if I download the .deb for enlightenment, I'm told what packages I need to go with it in order for it to install.

      If I download the .rpm for enlightenment, I'm told what programs and libraries are needed for install, and usually what versions.

      However, there's a big difference between "packages to install" and "libraries to install". If you have no idea what you're doing, would you know how to find libmwxtffz.so.3.2? Could you find it if it turned out to be part of GTK and not in "libmwxtffz*.rpm"?

      Sure, up2date and rpm versions of apt-get fix all this stuff, but they ware originally afterthoughts to the original formats. RPM has been working to incorporate these features and to continue to improve. After all, thats what OSS is about. RPM has come a long way from the time it would try to check for "/usr/bin/bash" as a dependency if you tried to roll your own .rpm's from source and just didn't get it quite right.

    12. Re:More Convience For Average People by pyros · · Score: 2, Interesting
      but apt-get install has never failed me

      You're still comparing 'apt-get install' to 'rpm -ivh'. You want to talk about working with an individual rpm package you've downloaded then talk about using dpkg in debian. apt-get queries a server to find dependencies for a package, downloads all of them, and runs dpkg to install them all. In Red Hat, up2date does the same thing. The whole point of my rant is you're not comparing the backend tool of one system to the automation tool that takes care of the same problems in another system. RPM fans don't say dpkg sucks compared to up2date. So don't tell us rpm sucks compared to apt-get. It's like saying I the clutch on a ford sucks compared to the automatic transmission of a chevy. The automatic transmission just does the clutch work for you.

    13. Re:More Convience For Average People by Machine9 · · Score: 1
      I'm SOOOO with you on this!
      I absolutely ADORE the portage system, but occasionally, it's a serious pain in the butt to compile BIG stuff (gnome and/or KDE come to mind).

      I firmly believe that a hybrid form of apt-portage that would allow you to choose between "compile from source" and "use precompiled package" would pretty much be the ultimate software management system...

      Now if only this was available on a nice newbie system like mandrake, I'd be able to convince my buddies to leave their heathen microsoft ways BEFORE they all get jailed when palladium hits and examines their enormous stocks of bootleg videos...

    14. Re:More Convience For Average People by kwiqsilver · · Score: 1

      No I'm comparing the whole process.
      The last I heard of it up2date was not free from redhat, so there's nothing that ships with redhat that allows you to type a simple command and get upgrades from a trusted central location.
      The entire package system of redhat sucks compared to debian or gentoo.
      You also can't (or couldn't the last time I was unfortunate enough to use RH--May '02) run a few simple commands and upgrade a box to the latest release. Debian and gentoo do it just fine.
      And apt-get does not query a server to get info. It's either stored in the deb or in a db (maybe in /var/lib/apt), I'd check, but I converted to gentoo for the athlon-xp optimizations.

    15. Re:More Convience For Average People by Firehawke · · Score: 1

      Eh, what do you expect from a group composed of people so passionate about their hobbies/jobs that they'll argue BSD/Linux, Microsoft VS The World At Large, and so forth to the death?

      I'm not saying I'm much better if I am at all, but seriously.. remember the target audience. We all take this just a hair too seriously sometimes.

    16. Re:More Convience For Average People by fo0bar · · Score: 2, Interesting
      You also can't (or couldn't the last time I was unfortunate enough to use RH--May '02) run a few simple commands and upgrade a box to the latest release. Debian and gentoo do it just fine.

      First of all, let me say that RPM is not perfect, just like everything else on the planet. I hate it when people have this "$X sucks nobody should ever use $X if you don't 100% agree with me you are an idiot" attitude. That being said, let me play devil's advocate for a bit:

      rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/8.0/en/os/i386/ RedHat/RPMS/redhat-release-8.0-8.noarch.rpm
      up2date -u -f

      Lookie, you just upgraded your system to 8.0.

    17. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A slight picked nit, the emerge system is at the core of Gentoo's design. The distro is totally built around this philosphy. Conversion to RPM wouldn't be much of a joke otherwise. up2date is an add-on program that attempts to take some of the pain from RPM dependancy hell. A bandaid. While what you say is literally true, it doesn't really do true justice to the differences between RedHat/Mandrake and Gentoo/Debian.

    18. Re:More Convience For Average People by jhylkema · · Score: 1
      Quoth the poster:

      I firmly believe that a hybrid form of apt-portage that would allow you to choose between "compile from source" and "use precompiled package" would pretty much be the ultimate software management system...

      For some of the big stuff, it's already offered. For example, you can do

      emerge mozilla
      or worse,
      emerge evolution
      (for which Mozilla (!) is a dependency) and it will compile Mozilla or Evolution from source. (The latter took - I shit you not - six hours on my Duron 800 with 384MB RAM.) Or, you can do
      emerge mozilla-bin
      and it will use a precompiled binary.

      Personally, I customized the hell out of /etc/make.conf and suffered. You are right, though, they need to offer the precompiled option for more stuff.

    19. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL, riiiight.

      up2date has about 10% of the packages that are available with Debian or Gentoo. You end up always searching around all over the place trying to find packages. Then you find a package, but it's for some other distro which has minor differences, or you're not able to find exactly the package your package needs, or ...

      It's a never ending battle, sorry but Debian and Gentoo make it so much easier (actually, I would argue against Gentoo being "easy", it's a PITA in other respects). I feel Debian offers the most.

    20. Re:More Convience For Average People by mark_lybarger · · Score: 1

      how about after you emerge evolution, you see that you have mozilla installed and go to remove it via:

      emerge unmerge mozilla

      shouldn't there be something to stop this unmerge and show you which packages you have installed that require the package you're uninstalling. how about wanting to remove mozilla and all the packages that are built on it. kind of an on delete cascade type of functionality. portage lets me remerge mozilla and all the package it's built on (deep) but not all the packages that's built on mozilla.... someday it'll mature a little.

    21. Re:More Convience For Average People by damiam · · Score: 1
      I firmly believe that a hybrid form of apt-portage that would allow you to choose between "compile from source" and "use precompiled package" would pretty much be the ultimate software management system...

      apt-get build-dep packagename
      apt-get -b source packagename

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    22. Re:More Convience For Average People by J.+J.+Ramsey · · Score: 1

      "An rpm doesn't include a list of all rpms it requires, just libs, and neither does the rpm database."

      Wrong.

      RPMs include *both* a list of the RPMs it requires and files as well.

    23. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How's that for convenient?

      I don't know about you, but "convenience" to me would be to have the thing not be busy for the next day fulfilling the request.

      If you replace emerge with apt-get in your example command line (yes, yes, change the package names where they differ), you will discover real convenience, when the speed at which your request is fulfilled is bound only by your network and disk.

    24. Re:More Convience For Average People by SQLz · · Score: 1

      If RPM was good then this news post would not have happened on April 1st.

    25. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How's this?
      # urpmi enlightenment
      To satisfy dependencies, the following packages are going to be installed (15 MB):
      enlightenment-0.16.5-12mdk.i586
      enlightenment-conf-0.15-20mdk.i586
      libfnlib0-0.5-3mdk.i586
      Is this OK? (Y/n)

      etc.
      Mandrake makes the RPM hell bearable.

    26. Re:More Convience For Average People by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1
      RPM HELL. I ended up compiling it.

      Once you've been bitten with this a few times, you'll appreciate the beauty of Slackware (or the source distros if you've got the leisure and the bandwidth). Good thing about Slack is that it doesn't get in the way of people who are content with the ./configure && make && make install cycle the way rpm does. It just leaves you the option to recompile just the important stuff (or everything) piecemeal, while leaving you with a world to stand on while you do it.

    27. Re:More Convience For Average People by pyros · · Score: 1
      now i wish i had stayed up to finish this discussion on time.

      maybe you should check facts for yourself. RHN has free subscriptions. I manage about a dozen RH servers, all using RHN, not one is paid for.

      fo0bar already showed you how to upgrade (and it works, I've done it).

      you're retarded if you think apt-get doesn't have to get a list of packages/dependencies from a server. What do you think 'apt-get update' does? It queries all the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list and caches the resluts. Yes dependencies are stored in the package files themselves (there would be no dependency tracking if it wasn't), but apt-get does have to check with a server to update it's list.

    28. Re:More Convience For Average People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The main difference is not in the packaing system per se, but in the adherence to common policies that allow many packages to coexist peacefully. Debian is huge, and at release nearly all of it works out of the box, and on 11 architectures. Without binary compiles, a lot of problems would not be found - approximately half the bug fixes are discovered during the multiple-architecture autobuild process. Source may build a package on a developer's machine, but subtle dependencies may prevent it from compiling and running elsewhere. By the time a .deb is uploaded and promoted to testing or stable it's gone through quite a guantlet already.

      Having such a common set of packages makes constructing an automatic dependency resolver easier, which is why apt-get often works better than it's redhat cousins. It also means you seldom need to go outside the package manager and risk losing accurate configuration and dependency information. If something you need isn't in Debian, consider packaging it for yourself to keep your package DB accurate, and then join Debian to become a developer.

      There are fairly small differences in the actual format that Debian doesn't want to give up, refinements in the way inst/preinst scripts fire, the way .debs can be unpacked with normal unix tools, config file handling, etc. It's arguable whether these are better in RH or Debian, but the last project leader who suggested changing fled before being kicked out (hi Bruce :). Debian does not encourage getting packages from third parties (rather join Debian and upload a native packaging), so binary package compatibility is not really a desireable feature anyway. You can, but don't expect much pity when the rpm doesn't work or it craps all over some other package's space and it doesn't make use of Debian's many unique features (menu, doc-base, alternatives, environment-free defaults, ...)
      apt-get does download the Packages.gz files, which are basically concatenations of the control files for every .deb in the particular Debian release. rproxy can reduce this to just the diffs from a previous download.

    29. Re:More Convience For Average People by PhilMills · · Score: 1
      With Gentoo you type:
      # emerge enlightenment ...with debian type:
      # apt-get install enlightenment
      Either distro will then install E, X, and all required libs/programs.


      You make that sound so trivial. My newly-loaded Gentoo box took about 24hrs (athlon 800, 512MB RAM) to emerge KDE by itself. God have mercy on your soul if you type "#emerge enlightenment" without a functional X-server already going.

      --
      Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, will be quoted out of context on
    30. Re:More Convience For Average People by edgezone · · Score: 1

      emerge kde mozilla netscape-flash mplayer-plugin openoffice xmms ogle

      A fairly complete desktop install done with one command. How's that for convenient?


      That is fairly easy, and would be great...except that by the time my laptop finishes the last of the compiling, I'm two versions behind.
      --
      -- If you can't laugh at yourself, someone else will do it for you.
    31. Re:More Convience For Average People by Mr.+Haplo · · Score: 1

      And to think that Apple users created Fink, to give us OS X users the same benefits you debian users get. :-)

      --
      -- You have moved your mouse. Windows will now reboot.
  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. You Suck! by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 4, Funny

    My heart jumped about 3 feet before I rememberd it is April 1.

    I'll just remember to disregard everything for the next 24 hours.

    Come to think of it, most of the stories are misleading anyway. Why should 1 April be any different.

    --
    I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
    1. Re:You Suck! by cryms0n · · Score: 0, Redundant

      My heart jumped about 3 feet before I rememberd it is April 1.

      Ditto.

      I'll just remember to disregard everything for the next 24 hours.

      Yup.

    2. Re:You Suck! by kaworu-sama · · Score: 1
      I just let out so many profanities i think i broke the Internet
      http://www.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/01/02 34215&mode=thread&tid=106
      User breaks Internet due to fake post, web site sued for millions.
      Just keep that in mind for the next 22 hours.
    3. Re:You Suck! by kwiqsilver · · Score: 1

      I'm in Phoenix, so I have an hour and a half of March left. Then the 24 hours of prank hell.
      And cuz it's still March, I didn't think about the April fools joke aspect...it scared me...I almost downloaded a BSD iso as the only true way to escape RPM. :)

    4. Re:You Suck! by KFK2 · · Score: 1
      I know how you feel.. I started thinking about what distro I was going to run because I dispise RPM's... and of course it doesn't hit me that it's April 1st seeing as how I just got off about 30 minutes ago (12:15 EST) and I was writing 03/31/03 all the time.. and to the days don't change until I go to bed (to many overseas trips) oh well..

      Happy April Fool's Day Everyone!!

    5. Re:You Suck! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was eating my hot grits with Natalie Portman and the the goatse guy when I realized that slashdot usually mods trolls up on April fools day. In Soviet Russia at least. FREE KEVIN!

    6. Re:You Suck! by ghum · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm in Phoenix, so I have an hour and a half of March left.

      I use Phoenix, too, but it is 1st of April. What did you configure differently?

    7. Re:You Suck! by kwiqsilver · · Score: 1

      If you mean slashdot time, I think it just assumes EDT.
      But my life doesn't revolve around slashdot, so I used my PC clock to determine the time.

    8. Re:You Suck! by macshit · · Score: 4, Funny

      That would be the best April-fools joke of all -- for the next 24 hours, only post interesting, well-researched, and insightful stories, complete with correct spelling and grammar and no dups.

      Then as the slashdot hordes are in the midst of their rejoicing, intoxicated by the future that could be, CmdrTaco can post his `Ha Ha! April Fuls!' story 10 or 11 times.

      --
      We live, as we dream -- alone....
    9. Re:You Suck! by Andrewkov · · Score: 1

      Actually, I'm in Toronto (Eastern Standard Time) and I read that article on Gentoo's site in the early evening on the 31st, so it was posted quite a bit before April 1.

    10. Re:You Suck! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      ... CmdrTaco can post his `Ha Ha! April Fuls!' story 10 or 11 times.

      Bwahaha! Oh how I wish I had mod points! Oh well, have this +1 Funny pseudomod.

  19. April Fool's by Mr.Ned · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-user&r=1&w= 2

    Check the above link for some of the gentoo-user mailing list archives - discussion started a few minutes after the newsletter went out. Common consensus is that it's April Fools - killing the package management system that makes Gentoo unique and requiring X is just too big a step to make without any discussion on the gentoo-dev list. Kurt did a really good job on this one if Slashdot bit!

    1. Re:April Fool's by spencerogden · · Score: 1

      >Kurt did a really good job on this one if Slashdot bit!

      Right... Because Slashdot always does it best to avoid April Fools stories. Erroneous stories are posted all year round, but on 4/1 they have an excuse..

    2. Re:April Fool's by pod · · Score: 2, Funny
      ...nt out. Common consensus is that it's April Fools - killin...


      The COMMON CONSENSUS?!??! I thought Gentoo users were a pretty smart bunch. It says it's April Fools Joke right on the article. Not much room for consensus there, I'm afraid.

      --
      "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
    3. Re:April Fool's by klieber · · Score: 2, Informative

      Thanks. I thought so, too. :)

      If you thought the discussion on gentoo-user was amusing, you should have seen the flamewar on #gentoo. I am amazed and astounded at how many people fell for this joke. Of course, I speak with inside knowledge of the project, but the idea that we would migrate to RPMs for our package management format is simply not in the realm of possibility. I assumed most people would realize that, too. :)

      Then again, we did go to great pains to research the LSB to come up with support, albeit tenuous, for our arguments.

      --kurt

      --
      Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
    4. Re:April Fool's by ttrafford · · Score: 1

      The version of this that was mailed out had no such warning, and got me for about 15 minutes. It's actually very well written, and it wasn't until after I stopped taking it seriously that I could laugh at how silly it was.

  20. The worst thing about April 1st.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is that *somewhere* in the world, it's that day for quite a long time, and /. has a longer open season of dumb jokes ;)

  21. Pardon me, come again? by EvilAlien · · Score: 1

    I can hardly believe that I just read that Gentoo would adopt RPM. The backlash for this move should be significant! NOOOOOOOOO! "Note: This is an April Fool's joke.". Gotta love it.

    Of course, its quite comforting to get this news on April 1st rather than any other day. I think I'll observe a day of mourning for what could have been, and then get back to compiling updates from source on April 2nd. Hehe.

    --
    perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
    1. Re:Pardon me, come again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was so glad others caught this before I got home. After I got the hook out of my lip I was going to reinstall Debian.
      I just never saw a joke in GWN, so thought it was for real. I mean leaving portage and going to rpm's would make Gentoo a sinking ship.

    2. Re:Pardon me, come again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was so glad others caught this before I got home. After I got the hook out of my lip I was going to reinstall Debian.

      You should have anyway. The time you save not waiting for things to compile would have freed you and your computer up so that you could actually use the thing.

    3. Re:Pardon me, come again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I mean leaving portage and going to rpm's would make Gentoo a sinking ship.

      And it isn't already?

  22. What this really means by Ignorant+Aardvark · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It must be getting around that time of year ... April, huh?

  23. that's not funny! by jhoffoss · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just had a f***ing heart attack, until I thought about that for a minute or two. First time (in ALL honesty) I've EVER been taken in by an April Fool's joke. Shame on you, DRobbins! SHAME ON YOU!!!

    --
    Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
    1. Re:that's not funny! by Luke-Jr · · Score: 1

      I assure you DRobbins was quite a bit more pissed about it than you are.

      --
      Luke-Jr
    2. Re:that's not funny! by Temporal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Are you saying you would have believed this article on any other day? This is Slashdot, after all. :P

    3. Re:that's not funny! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean to say this is the first time you actually REALISED you have been taken in by an April Fool's joke. You can stop searching on how to set the Evil bit in IPV4 headers now.

    4. Re:that's not funny! by gregbaker · · Score: 1

      It's not yet April 1 in my time zone. I call shenanagans!

    5. Re:that's not funny! by MadEagle · · Score: 1

      Actually the idea came not from the man himself but from one of the translators. I heard that DRobbins was a bit pissed when he read it.

      MadEagle

    6. Re:that's not funny! by intermodal · · Score: 1

      amen to that

      -ChopChopMasterOn

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    7. Re:that's not funny! by delta407 · · Score: 1

      Acutally, Kurt Lieber is the maintainer of GWN. I'm pretty sure he's the one that came up with that. ;-)

    8. Re:that's not funny! by jhoffoss · · Score: 1

      this I know (well, now i do...but I knew drobbins didn't do the GWN.) Anyway, I don't think Kurt has the power to implement that change without drobbins (and 90% of gentoo users) dying immediately...thankfully.

      --
      Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
  24. Doggy style by ahkbarr · · Score: 1

    I want to see this post translated to Snoop Doggy Style...

    "Ho, lizzen up! In a izzeffort to conform to da LSB stizzandards, Gizzentoo Linux will be..."

    Anyone care to trizanslate this mo betta? My Doggy Style is rusty.

    --
    Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
  25. West Coast is Confused by Obscenity · · Score: 2

    Unfortunately all of us West-Coast people who dont realize that there is a time difference dont have the April 1'st status displaying on our computer clocks. We're ovbiously in the dark here.

    --
    OMG OMG OMG WTF OMG WTF BBQ STFU RTFM, OMFG OMG OMG OMG ROFL LMAO OMG WTF STFU ROFLMAO
    1. Re:West Coast is Confused by Fester213 · · Score: 1

      What timezone does slashdot run on? It isn't midnight in ET yet either.

      --

      -- Fester
      "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
    2. Re:West Coast is Confused by TwP · · Score: 1

      GMT +27:00

  26. They go me! by Mullen · · Score: 1

    Alright, I read the previous story and saw right through it and then fell for this. I am truly an April's Fool.

    --
    Linux O Muerte!
    1. Re:They go me! by jhoffoss · · Score: 1

      to my credit, I loaded /. while there were no comments posted on this story and saw that immediately, so no other 4/1 jokes entered my brain prior.

      --
      Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
  27. #gentoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After chaos in #gentoo for a few hours, drobbins gets back to find himself Query-spammed. He has assured everyone that it was a joke... and that it was not the least bit funny.

  28. Debian? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This gives more reason to use Debian, the only Microsoft endosed operating system in the entire world that's also the Universal Operating system. The next version of debian could be had for 7 dollars per month. Beats any evercrack subscription.

  29. Um... by BlueGecko · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...couldn't we at least hold off April Fool's jokes until--and I admit this is a long shot--April Fool's Day?

    1. Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad americans think that the day starts on their east coast.

    2. Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GMT is the home of time, it's now 6ish in the morning.

    3. Re:Um... by dotgain · · Score: 1
      Oh FFS already! Could everyone please grab a globe or and atlas and locate the international fscking date line? You may as well argue when New Year's really happens or Christmas or whatever else you celebrate.

      Do we wait until our exact time of birth to celelbrate our birthday? The only reason I'm going by GMT is because noon here in NZ is long gone, and I don't start work until 3PM, which IMO is the best place for April Fool jokes. Fortunately, every manager has taken the day off too.

  30. aperil foos by stratjakt · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it sure would suck if there was a way for all linux users to install binary distributions without a ton of headaches!

    good thing you still have to build everything from source to make sure it works.

    phew! you had me going.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    1. Re:aperil foos by bubkus_jones · · Score: 1

      Jeez, I nearly choked on my pasta when I read that! What evil sick mind begat this????

  31. *timothy is a dumbass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: timothy is a dumbass

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when IDC confirmed that timothy is being a dumbass yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of his former intelligence. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that timothy is a dumbass, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. timothy is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive IQ test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict timothy's future. The hand writing is on the wall: timothy faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for timothy because timothy is a dumbass. Things are looking very bad for timothy. As many of us are already aware, timothy continues to be a dumbass. Crappy articles flow like a river of blood.

    All major surveys show that timothy has steadily declined in intelligence. timothy is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If timothy is to survive at all it will be among Slashdot dilettante dabblers. timothy continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle
    could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, timothy is a dumbass

  32. Gentoo forms Strategic partnership with Microsoft by afsthumper · · Score: 1

    And they also patent their emerge utilities, and sell them to the U.S. Treasury Department for $20 million, which should fund Gentoo for at least 120 more years.

    cat /dev/taxpayers > irs | grep -i April_fools

  33. fooled me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    I was gonna write this tirade about how USE variables are the coolest thing about Gentoo.. and then it hit me.. doh! I think I'm just gonna hibernate for the next 24:15(I'm in US eastern so my guard isn't supposed to be up yet.. yea.. that's the ticket!).

  34. I am a sucker by Captain+Rotundo · · Score: 1

    I have to say, I am off my game this year, one story, and I already fell for it. I clicked through to the story thinking "what the hell, this is soo stupid"....

    1. Re:I am a sucker by Tolar · · Score: 1

      well same here .. maybe i should have slept more than 2 hours ;)
      i mean .. they got some devs too .. (best example: stupid me ;))

      --
      Linux is like a Wigwam. No Windows no Gates but Apache inside
  35. Three words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck you Slashdot.

    Oh oh. Another 3 words oh so more clever than the last.

    Pieces of shit.

    Oh oh. I'm so clever and funny! Mod me! Mod me! You fucking fags.

  36. And I quote by spreerpg · · Score: 1

    "Note: This is an April Fool's joke."

    --

    ---
    Kwanza is not a Polish holiday!
  37. April fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aaron Brown interviewed famed peace activist Daniel Ellsberg today, employing his trademark fair, balanced, and highly thoughtful style.

    Here is a transcript of the complete interview.

    BROWN: Mr. Ellsberg, it's good to see you again sir.

    The Iraqi political strategy is in large part to use the anti-war demonstrations around the world to create political pressure on the coalition governments to stand down, cease fire and stop the war. In that regard, are you playing into the hands of what I think you would even acknowledge is a very bad regime.

    ELLSBERG: Certainly a very bad regime. Whose judgment were you just describing, that that's Saddam's strategy? I don't know what his strategy is, do you?

    BROWN: Do you, do you dispute that this is a reasonable interpretation of what Iraqi political strategy is?

    ELLSBERG: I really don't know. As a matter of fact it's clear that the advisors that Secretary Rumsfeld has been advising and relying on, including Richard Perle who apparently just left today, was extremely bad at understanding Saddam. Certainly I don't pretend to, I haven't been to Iraq and I guess none of them have.

    I have been in combat, and I do have, as a civilian (I was a trained Infantry officer in the Marine Corps) and I do have some sense of how men in the field react, and I imagine that some of that applies to Iraqi soldiers as well as to American soldiers. I doubt very much whether either of them are looking principally at CNN, frankly.

    BROWN: Well I hope that soldiers in the field aren't looking at CNN but I think, it strikes me, Dr. Ellsberg, that we veered a little there. Let me try and re-frame the question. If the Iraqi political strategy is to use the anti-war movement to put pressure on the coalition to cease fire, don't - whether that's the case or not -

    ELLSBERG: That implies a rather delusional aspect of Saddam Hussein that I don't have any confidence in. If you really think that Saddam Hussein is relying on reading newspaper accounts or seeing media accounts of people, handfuls of people or thousands of people, lying in the streets, and relying on that to influence, shall we say, President Bush? I didn't see it happening in getting into this war, and I don't think Saddam is so foolish as to think that his own safety, as a tyrant in that country, depends on us. So I really think that's an irrelevant question.

    BROWN: Do you not think that the anti-war movement -

    ELLSBERG: In fact I think that's very naive. I think that one who thinks - that goes back - I think that's just a way, really, of the administration trying to quell dissent in this country. Such theories - and really, they're theories of Saddam Hussein - are not very good. That's a great part of the crisis this country is in, right now.

    BROWN: Do you think the anti-war movement of this time will be, in any way shape or form successful in the way that ultimately the anti-war movement was in encouraging an end to the Vietnam War?

    ELLSBERG: Well really the anti-war movement had it's effect primarily after months and years of body bags had come home and I pray, I hope that that is not going to be the basis for success - of any kind of - I hope that doesn't happen, in a word, and I don't know anyone, in the movement opposing this war, who wants that.

    I would be very happy, by the way, to see Saddam leave, dead or alive at this moment, to see all of his troops defect, to se his generals defect as apparently was confidently predicted - that confidence was very foolish - and I think by the way, should undermine Bush's confidence in the judgment of the people who have been advising Rumsfeld, and think of replacing them, very quickly. I would like to see that but it doesn't seem to be happening at all. I never was confident that that would happen.

    Really I don't think many people on those streets have very much confidence at all that they will influence President Bush.

  38. LSB and Package Management Specifications. by SuperBug · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IMHO, something I've long thought about regarding LSB is that there should be a Package Management specification. Much like the way IEEE defines specifications for things, ANSI, ISO, and so on.

    After that, it should be up to a developer to decide how to implement that standard and thus conform to it. I like RPM. It's pretty easy to write for and deal with, at least for me, but I feel it is lacking a lot of things that I think it should have by now.

    It should be more modular, with regards to how package .spec files are written. It should provide more feature sets. i.e. Why does redcarpet, up2date, urpm, and others provide auto package dependancy checking and fulfillment while the standalone "rpm" base program doesn't? Yes, I know apt does, but I'm speaking only from within the realm of RPM. There are similiar tools available that do different things, on the same side of the fence.

    This is why I believe a full-on specification for what RPM is should be better established than it is today. IMHO, this offers people a much better reason to decide rpm over apt or apt over rpm or whatever else, when the playing field is leveled.

    Wishful thinking I guess.

    --
    --SuperBug
    1. Re:LSB and Package Management Specifications. by Webmonger · · Score: 1

      Yes, I know apt does

      But are you remembering that apt does RPM? Quite well, I might add. We've been using it for months at work.

    2. Re:LSB and Package Management Specifications. by Compuser · · Score: 1

      There should be two standards:
      one for binary packaging RPM style
      the other for compile-script based packaging ebuild style.
      These two serve different purposes and should
      not be lumped together.

    3. Re:LSB and Package Management Specifications. by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1
      IMHO, something I've long thought about regarding LSB is that there should be a Package Management specification. Much like the way IEEE defines specifications for things, ANSI, ISO, and so on.

      Well, there is. It's just not very useful, because it says you can only have one dependancy. D'oh.

      Wishful thinking I guess.

      Perhaps. But you're not the only one thinking wishfully about this. The main packaging dudes from Redhat, Debian and yes, even Gentoo, are talking about it.

      The list has gone a bit dead lately. Alain seems to have disappeared :( Hopefully it'll pick up again soon. It'd be nice to have standards for packaging metadata (which solves a lot of our current woes with packaging).

    4. Re:LSB and Package Management Specifications. by Ed+Avis · · Score: 1

      No but RPM and similar packaging systems do have compile-script stuff. That's what a source RPM is. It includes a spec file which says how to get the source, patch it, configure it, compile it, install it and finally put together the installed files into a binary RPM.

      The RPM spec file format should be extended so it covers all of the features used by Gentoo's build scripts. (I think it probably handles most of them already.) Then Gentoo really could move to RPM for package handling - all built from source, naturally.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    5. Re:LSB and Package Management Specifications. by elp · · Score: 1

      RPM is just the base installer. Redhat's up2date does exactly what you want.

      For sites that don't need or want to use RHN then by far the best system to use is the redhat rpm port of apt-get available on freshrpms.net (not sure where its real home is).

      We've been using for almost 2 years now and it really is awesome.

  39. Almost had me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This one had me going, until I read the comment highlighted in GREEN. I'm reminded of initials... RTFsomething or other... bah.

  40. This has to be an april fools joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Simply because Gentoo would never do something to deliberately make their system easier to install and, more importantly, maintain (unless, that is, you think that the reason other distributions are so cumbersome to use is that they have actual installation programs).

  41. mod up plz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  42. RPM retired soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's scandal !!!
    Red H. is going to retire this format pretty soon and
    we hear something like this.
    I defenitely move to Winoppix Xp today

  43. From the page "Note:This is an April Fool's joke." by jbwiv · · Score: 1

    Apparently they don't have a lot of faith in their users' sense of humor and ability to figure things out for themselves... ;-)

  44. PROVING.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there really is a sucker born every minute!

  45. It isn't our fult America is behind the times by rmlane · · Score: 1

    It -is- April Fools Day in a largish chunk of the world. In fact, if you take noon as the traditional cut off for jokes, April Fools day had already finished in Australia by the time this was posted.

  46. Thank GOD it's April Fool's... by Chordonblue · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...We wouldn't want our various versions of Linux to actually agree on ONE standard for package management, after all! :P

    --
    "...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
    1. Re:Thank GOD it's April Fool's... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure we would....

      just not Redhat's.

      or debian's.

      or Gentoo's

      or Slackware's

      or ......

  47. I see. by cjpez · · Score: 1

    ... and so it begins!

  48. Re:From the page "Note:This is an April Fool's jok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They added that note after they released it. Apparently the heat started mere seconds after it was released in the forums and that cap'n drobbins wasn't too pleased.

  49. I really believed it for a moment by Gajon · · Score: 1

    Damn I really got scared to bones!.. I live in Mexico and here we dont have aprils fool, we do have an equivalent but on another day... You really got me unprepared

  50. Only found here on Slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Other April Fools posts coming soon:

    - Microsoft to open source upcoming DRM server

    - Keanu Reeves to be cast for undisclosed role in Star Wars: Episode III

    - Sun and Microsoft to announce new Java product compatible with Common Language Runtime

    - OpenBSD runs unmodified on upcoming Playstation 3, XBOX 2 support unknown

    - Star Trek's Rick Berman and Star Wars creator George Lucas to collaborate on new SciFi/Fantasy movie

    - Finally, Rob Malda previews new Slashcode release with intergrated spell checking, link tester, and duplicate article finder.

    1. Re:Only found here on Slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All slashdot trolls drop the AC account, and live happly ever after as polite /. users.

  51. Not April Fool's joke by jsse · · Score: 1

    It appears before 1 April so I must be true. I've found drobbins the other day in a pub surrounded by hot chicks wore nothing but undersized red-hat t-shirts. He was sold obviously. It was not suprising in view of his track record - I really saw him speaking good of all-evil-gnu-veiled JFS, while he should have praise the other pure GNU projects which don't have backed by evil-empires-as-you-know-them, and then I saw buckets of money on his desks with blue thank you notes. He has been sold no less than once, why would I surprise next time he migrate .NET to Gentoo!

  52. I've been on alert that it is april fools day... by Xpilot · · Score: 1

    ...since my GNOME fish died last night.

    --
    "Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
  53. Every single time... by TechScared · · Score: 2, Funny

    sick sons of bitches...

  54. Gentoo also releasing distro for 8086 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



    Pull out those IBM PCs & XTs. Dust them off. I actually have some still in use in a chem lab.

    Gentoo has been working on a stripped down version, similar to the embedded versions, that will run on the old 8086 and 8088 processors. Only 256 KB of ram will be needed, and it will load and run from a floppy drive, so my PCs with two 5 1/4" floppy drives and no hard drive will work.

    Not much, but I can put them to use for dedicated work such as monitoring fan speeds, starting and shutting down ventilation fans, lighting, perimeter alarms, etc.

    Are there any mailing lists for 8086/8088 users?

    Anybody else have creative uses for these old workhorses?

    1. Re:Gentoo also releasing distro for 8086 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is QED in Gentoo. Just set your compile options to -march=8086. It'll take a LONG time to compile, though.......

  55. Re:From the page "Note:This is an April Fool's jok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can we say "diblitatingly humor impaired"...?

  56. It's still March on the west coast. by norweigiantroll · · Score: 1

    Besides, didn't fool me for two seconds. Gentoo is all about sources.

    1. Re:It's still March on the west coast. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, and you can't get source code in RPM format...

      Loser.

    2. Re:It's still March on the west coast. by RoLi · · Score: 1

      Well there are source-rpms - it would be very well possible to use srpm as base to get the same functionality as portage. It wouldn't make any sense at all, but it would be possible.

    3. Re:It's still March on the west coast. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Funny
      Gentoo is all about sources.

      Unlike /. which will post anything without checking for authenticity.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  57. April Fools? by boola-boola · · Score: 1

    ...too bad in all of Central and Western US, it's still March 31st. Joke's on YOU! :-)

    1. Re:April Fools? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad there is a whole fucking world outside of the U.S.

      Then again Bush managed to ignore them, so hey, why can't you?

    2. Re:April Fools? by Bombcar · · Score: 1

      In SOVIET RUSSIA the JOKES on YOU!

  58. Well it is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just because it isn't April 1 in your slice of the world doesn't mean it isn't anywhere else.

    As a matter of fact, the time where I live is 2:35pm April 1st. So I guess I could rightly ask why it has taken so long for most news sites to get into the April Fool's day spirit.

    JC

  59. Troll: RPM Recursive Acronym by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RPM Preferred by Morons

  60. The only thing that pissed me off about this... by Metalhead01 · · Score: 1

    was that they included security updates with this little joke. Other than that, it was a good joke! Caught me off guard for a second. :)

    --
    The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
  61. April Fools' by Shazow · · Score: 1

    No one ever takes an article posted on April 1st with any seriousness.

    One of these days, it'll be like "Saddam fights back against Bush! Thousands of Iraqi troops entering American borders." and we'll all be like "GahahaA!!"

    Next thing we know, we're all wearing turbans and riding mules to work. ..It could happen!

    - shazow

  62. Whats next? by gmuslera · · Score: 1
    Oh, I know... USA lost the war and the new America president is Saddam Hussein. Or better. Bush and Saddam reached a truce ezchanging countries. so now Saddam is the president of USA and Bush of Irak.

    Don't know if this will be funny, just ask how funny felt the gentoo fans about a rpm migration (at least it could had been a migration to .deb)

    1. Re:Whats next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Americans like you would learn to spell the word 'Iraq', and idiots on CNN would learn to say it as 'eeraq' and not 'I raq'

    2. Re:Whats next? by jhunsake · · Score: 0, Troll

      Irak, Irac, Eerack, Ioncrack, what the fuck difference does it make? It's a shitty little country. Who cares? Or are you mad because we spell the name of your shitty little country wrong also?

    3. Re:Whats next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who cares?

      The people who live there, and the thousands of soldiers fighting there. I think they care quite a bit.

      You can't even have to common fucking decency to learn the name of the place you're invading. I guess you just like the war for the Reality T.V on CNN and the promise of cheaper gas eh? Sickening.

    4. Re:Whats next? by gmuslera · · Score: 1
      Americans like you would learn to spell the word 'Iraq'

      South-Americans like me know that Irak is the name of the country in spanish, but sometimes I'm not that aware of small changes in proper names between languages, is somewhat harder than translate normal words.

    5. Re:Whats next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Moron.

      His email and website addresses end in ".uy". That's Uraguay, not the US.

      And FYI, in Spanish, the language of Uraguay, the word for Iraq is "Irak".

      Dumbass. Probably a Gentoo user too. Go back to recompiling 600 megs from scratch so you can impress those "girls" on IRC.

  63. Nice one! by TheFrood · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was a clever April Fool's post. It caught me by surprise. Well done, Slashdot.

    Of course, what I'm not looking forward to is the next twenty-four hours, when Slashdot will be filled with nonstop April Fool's jokes, completely defeating the purpose of April Fool's day.

    TheFrood

    --
    If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
    1. Re:Nice one! by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      Of course, what I'm not looking forward to is the next twenty-four hours, when Slashdot will be filled with nonstop April Fool's jokes, completely defeating the purpose of April Fool's day.

      I'll admit, it would be nice to see some real news intermingled with it; so that I at least have a chance to bite, rather than being fairly certain that it is a hoax...

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    2. Re:Nice one! by Commutative+Monoid · · Score: 1

      Why are you crediting Slashdot with the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter's joke?

      --
      You have exactly 314 seconds to come up with a less retarded plot.
    3. Re:Nice one! by m00nun1t · · Score: 3, Funny

      They will probably just get the same april fools joke and show it 3 times in the next 24 hours as duplicates :)

    4. Re:Nice one! by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 1
      This was a clever April Fool's post. It caught me by surprise. Well done, Slashdot.

      Really? YOU ARE SO FIRED! has always been a troll so even without realizing it was the first of April (Hey, I'm just awake, I'm allowed to be in a semi-conscious state of mind.) it was clear it was either a joke, bullshit or some goatse links that slipped through thanks to a drunk editor.

      But still, it was a funny :)

    5. Re:Nice one! by Drakonian · · Score: 1

      Whoa, +1 insightful there! They really did!

      --
      Random is the New Order.
    6. Re:Nice one! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      nope, 5.

      -- an error i got, which is stupid but will serve to foil the compression filter as well:

      Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.

      It's been 17 seconds since you hit 'reply'!

      Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator.

  64. what about mod points? by lactose99 · · Score: 1

    I just got my 5 superanifty mod points, and its 15 minutes (EST) into April Fools' Day. How in the hell am I supposed to use these things now?

    --
    Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
    1. Re:what about mod points? by mark-t · · Score: 1, Funny

      Mod people down as an april fool's prank. :)

    2. Re:what about mod points? by Mac+Degger · · Score: 1

      hehe..looks like lactose99 has another account with modpoints :)

      --
      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
    3. Re:what about mod points? by Zoolander · · Score: 1

      How is that flamebait? Ahh, I see: a mod April's Fool joke...

      --
      Meep.
    4. Re:what about mod points? by mark-t · · Score: 1
      How is that flamebait?

      Good question. I'm guessing that the moderators didn't notice the important grin emoticon at the end of my post.

      This begs the question, however, are only stories allowed to be jokes on April 1st, but comments aren't? I admit, that is ironic -- but is it actually amusing?

  65. april 1st by pavera · · Score: 1

    the 1 day every year that nerds throughout the world refuse to acknowledge that actual news might happen, and decide to just play jokes on each other all day...

  66. One thing to say. by Soko · · Score: 1

    bash#>rpm -e April_Fools.4.1.20-03.src.rpm

    Soko

    --
    "Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
  67. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thinking of switching to RPM? That's great! RPM is the best anyway. It never crashes, especially not in RedHat 8.0. It never hangs half-way through important installations like glibc. (I know this because the bug reports all get marked as "closed".) Thankfully, I must have only been imagining that this was actually a bug that has plagued all five of my RedHat 8.0 installations since day one.

    And that RedHat Developer network? Man. Why would I ever download that free "Apt for RPM" when I could just as easily fork over my monthly $$$ subscription to RedHat. Phhht ... useful, free command line tools ... they're for wussies anyway. ;)

  68. Time Zones. Argh. by SecretAsianMan · · Score: 5, Funny
    Slashdot wrote:
    Posted by timothy on 2003-03-31 22:33
    How about a little mercy for the other time zones, you insensitive clod!
    --

    Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.

  69. REDUNDANT PARENT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Me too!

  70. Try the Shizzolator at asksnoop.com by bigt_littleodd · · Score: 0, Troll
    Try the Shizzolator translator at:

    http://www.asksnoop.com

    The CNN default was pretty funny before the war started (too many muthas gettin capped, nowutimsayn?)

    --
    Let's play Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'll be Pestilence.
  71. Happy 1/4/2003 by mattite · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was so scared, I soiled myself. Now excuse me while I go change my armor....

    Just in case anyone's really confused:
    http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030401-newslet ter.xml

    1. Re:Happy 1/4/2003 by La+Temperanza · · Score: 0

      Happy January 4th to you too. :)

      --

      --
      est modus in rebus
  72. All April fools jokes aside... by DaCool42 · · Score: 1

    Why is RPM specified in the LSB anyway? Just because its the "most common"? Even that may be debatable.

    --

    ----
    All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
  73. Worst April Fool's Joker EVER by Ghengis · · Score: 1

    Really, who did this fool? Come on, step-forward... there has to be ONE of you.

    --

    "The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS

  74. what's next by b17bmbr · · Score: 1

    /. to switch to IIS?

    --
    My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
  75. o my god this is HORRIBAL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    my thoughts and prayers are with gentoo this is the most horribal thing evar

  76. Is LSB an April Fool? by amcguinn · · Score: 1

    If only we could find out that LSBs requirement to use RPM was also an April Fool

    1. Re:Is LSB an April Fool? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Today's the day they announce the whole LSB is an April Fool's joke.

  77. april fools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How to kill your user base in one easy step!

    God I almost died until I glanced at the calandar.

  78. Gentoo forum thread by nacs · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a thread in the Gentoo forums about this.

    --
    "I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
    1. Re:Gentoo forum thread by axxackall · · Score: 1

      and the Poll

      --

      Less is more !
  79. Time to fork. by fava · · Score: 1

    If this isn't a vaid reason to fork I dont know what is.

    Yes I know what the date is.

    1. Re:Time to fork. by p00ya · · Score: 1

      I wonder how many gentoo users began looking for a new distro before they'd got to reading the Note... I know I nearly did. *eek* no USE ;)

    2. Re:Time to fork. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *eek* no USE ;)

      Oh no, no more lazy packaging where features are hardwired into the code, requiring hours of computer time to change the feature set. How will we ever survive.

  80. Good advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think it is best to skip slashdot for a whole
    day. Judging from all the fakes last year (thanks
    for the reminder) , it is just not worth to be
    troubled the whole day. If it is somthing
    important most organizations will probably not dare
    announce it on April 1st.

  81. Bah.. by PhoenixK7 · · Score: 1

    Its not even April 1 here yet! ;) (CST)

  82. I Hate April Fools Day by Capt_Troy · · Score: 1

    Who is the fool?

    One who ruins his reputation as a credible news source by posting false stories once a year?

    or

    One who believes the false stories?

    1. Re:I Hate April Fools Day by Andrewkov · · Score: 1

      Credible news source? What credible news source??! :-)

  83. (ot for april fools ,,, but still valid ) by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 1

    There should be a recommendation, not a specification. Let me explain:

    There will be some linux systems wherein zero file manipulation occurs on the system image. Perhaps the files are rsynced from a master, or certain filesystems are network mounted. Or perhaps the system is COTS and boots from flash. Clearly, a package management system would be inappropriate in each case.

    Or, perhaps the system is running in a limited environment, and the most basic techniques are being used to maintain it (ie shell scripts, cp, mv, ln, etc.) to reduce space or complexity.

    Finally, choosing one true package manager would be limiting. Why? Because we have at least 3 or 4 modern choices right now, and if one gets chosen for linux, the others might stagnate, or be adopted by other Unicies. And they could become popular, only to break the LSB when we clamor to get them back.
    And why should the application developer be limited to how he chooses to distribute his software? A developer for Windows users will have his pick of at least 3 different installation systems (with the back-end state, but not dependancy management, handled by Windows). And it's no easier to do "relocations" and "dependancy management" with their systems than RPM or apt or anything else.

    Here's what SHOULD happen.

    1) We create a standard based on something that no one uses on linux right now, namely the Sys V package tools (like Solaris). It becomes a recommendation (not a required inclusion), but then we also stipulate that IF a package manager is bundled, it can't be certified LFS-compliant unless...

    2) We ensure that an LFS compliant package manager can do everything those tools do, AND, the provide the legacy interface so that Solaris admins can still hack it.

    3) We provide a convienent set of extensions to the package management tools that address certain oft-sited shortcomings. The biggest would be automatic dependancy analysis and a way to fetch the required patches or missing components. Also it would be nice to have a way to "force" things that wouldn't normally be allowed, and a way to remember that they were forced.

    4) (Optional?) Force the package managers to use a common format for storing installed packages, etc. so they can be swapped out without fear of losing the package information. Perhaps not the entire backend, but enough to ensure the Sys V package interface is unpurturbed by the change behind the scenes.

    With a recommendation, we can be sure that a package manager, if available, will function consistently across the various package management systems.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
    1. Re:(ot for april fools ,,, but still valid ) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the most basic techniques .....
      ie shell scripts, cp, mv, ln, etc.

      most basic.... yeah. Those lamers should learn Assembly just to do trivial shit.

  84. For a moment... by megazoid81 · · Score: 1
    ... I thought Gentoo was finally becoming genteel, but alas it is not to be.

    If I made you look up the word 'genteel', mod me up - you learned a new word today!

  85. hahaha by jesperht · · Score: 0

    nice one :D...happy april fools!

  86. April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by div_2n · · Score: 1

    I am not a Linux guru. I am not a complete newbie either. I have been running RH 8.0 for a number of months and so far my complaints center on no AA fonts and a firewire CD-RW that doesn't work.

    Please tell me what is so bad about RPM's versus other package management systems. Why do people hate it so bad? What am I missing by using mostly RPMs? (I have done standard makefile builds before)

    It seems to me that if someone could create a package management system that could read packages in all their forms and resolve any underlying dependencies then you would have one heck of a product.

    1. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      well, it isn't so much RPM that sucks as a tool in itself as it is braindead package authors (well, it is kind of non-unixy in the small tool that does one thing kind of philosophy, rpm is a huge monolithic program). So you try to install lynx and find perl is a dependency. wha? ok, so you install perl. You don't really have space for it on this box, but hey, maybe it will come in handy. But the perl rpm says a dozen or so perl modules are dependencies. huh? Those damn things are optional, goddammit. But whatever. So perl is happy. Back to wget. Now it says it has to install index.html. WTF? A fucking homepage? That's a damn dependency? awright, let it continue, and now it bitches cause index.html is generated by python.

      That's the problem with RPM systems. You want to install a text-only browser on a 486 and wind up installing 100 megs more vthan you wanted to.

      Some software comes only in RPM packages, like Compaq's C compiler. Ever tried to install an rpm on a Slackware system? It complains that glibc, bin/sh and a kernel aren't installed. RPM is stupid.

      I've patched my rpm to take --just-do-it-you-goddam-piece-of-shit as an argument, which sets the --force and --nodep bits.

    2. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by be-fan · · Score: 1

      Reasons why people don't like RPM --

      1) Opaque. The RPM db is binary, easy to trash. The Portage DB is a directory tree of plain-text files. RPMs are binary. Ebuilds are plain-text files.

      2) Complex. RPM is a complex format. It pretty much takes a programmer to write an RPM. EBuilds are easy enough for just someone with a knowledge of the UNIX shell to write. As a result, the Gentoo forums are filled with user ebuilds, and the ebuild library for Gentoo is huge, despite the much smaller Gentoo userbase.

      3) Power. RPM, by itself, is pretty dumb. RPM and RedHat are the reasons why people like to bitch about the complexity of software installation on Linux. In RedHat, if you want to install a program, you have to manually recurse the dependency tree of the packages. In Portage, you just request the installation of one package, and everything else is handled automatically.

      4) Flexibility. First, compiling each package to a specific machine does gain you some performance benifets. It's on the order of 10% or less depending on the package, but that's basically a two-bin improvement for most CPUs, so it's nothing to sneeze at. The most important part is that, since everything is compiled on your system, the user can tailor optional features for their system. For example, I use ALSA, so I have a setting in Portage that automatically compiles all my packages with ALSA support. Since ALSA support is optional in many packages, a particular set of RPMs may or may not be compiled with ALSA enabled. This concept is applicable to lots of things, like X support (Vim, for example, can be compiled with or without X support), SSE (mplayer), etc.

      You're not really missing out on much using RPM, exept for ease of use. If RPM serves you well enough, then by all means keep using it. However, you really should look into apt4rpm, which is a tool that extends the APT package management system to handle RPM packages. This way, you can just do "apt-get install mplayer" on your RedHat box, and all the dependencies of mplayer will automatically be installed first.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    3. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1
      3) Power. RPM, by itself, is pretty dumb. RPM and RedHat are the reasons why people like to bitch about the complexity of software installation on Linux. In RedHat, if you want to install a program, you have to manually recurse the dependency tree of the packages. In Portage, you just request the installation of one package, and everything else is handled automatically.

      Look, I'm as game for a good packaging flamewar as much as the next guy, but be fair. If you subscribe to RHN you can use up2date to do what emerge does (but for binaries of course). You're also assuming that every piece of software in the world is available via portage, which clearly isn't the case.

      Our packaging problems go a lot deeper than RPM, believe me. You don't know the half of it :(

    4. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by 10Ghz · · Score: 1
      Our packaging problems go a lot deeper than RPM, believe me. You don't know the half of it :(


      Care to enlighten us, and what is your proposal to fix the situation (apart from Autopackage of course ;))?
      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
    5. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by tal197 · · Score: 2, Informative
      So you try to install lynx and find perl is a dependency. wha? ok, so you install perl. You don't really have space for it on this box, but hey, maybe it will come in handy. But the perl rpm says a dozen or so perl modules are dependencies. huh? Those damn things are optional, goddammit.

      Sounds like you want something like Zero Install. It uses the globally unique nature of the Internet's DNS system to remove the need for a central package database, allowing packages to be fetched (and cached) as they're needed, so you never install anything you don't use.

      There are no dependancy issues, because applications link to resources by URI, so the system always knows where to get missing files from.

      And you don't need to be root to 'install' stuff, because it's just a high-speed network cache, so all users can install stuff easily and safely, and you don't get buggy running-as-root postinst scripts bombing out and messing up your system like on Debian, etc.

      And April 1st was probably a bad time for me to announce this ;-)

    6. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've patched my rpm to take --just-do-it-you-goddam-piece-of-shit as an argument, which sets the --force and --nodep bits.

      I do hope you have submitted that patch to redhat - a single argument like that would surely be invaluable to others!

    7. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by jred · · Score: 1

      Ever tried to install an rpm on a Slackware system?

      Umm. No. Isn't that some kind of blasphemy?

      --

      jred
      I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
    8. Re:April Fools Aside, what is wrong with RPM? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 1
      you've got glibc symbol versioning issues, rtld grouped fixup, relocatability apis (the lack of), standard metadata/namespacing.

      Lots of things :/ autopackage is a small part of the solution, we are involved in other things as well.

  87. give it a break by glwtta · · Score: 1
    this april fool's "hilarity" gets lamer and lamer every year - can't we just give it a rest?

    It's spreading to other sites now too, the whole CPAN/Matt's archive thing did give me a bit of a scare, course it didn't help that they did it a whole day early (for me anyway, don't know what time zone they are in)

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
    1. Re:give it a break by 1s44c · · Score: 1


      They should rethink the slashdot subtitle on
      april the first.

      How about:

      Slashdot - bad jokes for nerds. Stuff someone made up for a giggle.

    2. Re:give it a break by Army+Eye · · Score: 1

      Spreading to other sites? Surely you don't think Slashdot 'invented' the Web practice of posting gags on April Fool's day.

  88. In other news by einhverfr · · Score: 2, Funny

    RedHat announced today that they will be abandoning the RPM format in favor of .deb. One RedHat source who asked to remain anonymous called RPM "the biggest support nightmare I have ever seen. Why, compiling software is so much easier." ;-)

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  89. April Fool's icons by megazoid81 · · Score: 1
    The last couple of stories are obviously April Fool's stories, but there is no indication from Slashdot's side that they are. How about making a new April Fool's icon for each category, which is slightly different from the original in a spoofy kind of way (cf. Google)? I know it's a lot of work for one day of the year, but it doesn't seem like the slashdot maintainers do much else anyway :)

    Or for that matter, how about including normal icons in the 'Slashdot tape' to the right of the Slashdot logo but using the 'Laugh. It's funny' humor icons in the main body of the front page?

    I mean, some stupid CIO could easily be fed these stories as facts. I know it's their fault for buying stupid shit, but hey, let's be a little more considerate, please?

  90. Oh Yes, of course ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And Saddam Hussein is going to become the most well known humanitarian and philanthropist in the world, too.

  91. w00t by caternater · · Score: 1

    I have a much better April fool's joke: "My gentoo installation finished in under 4 hours on my Pentium 400."

    Hell, "My gentoo installation finished in a weekend" would've been just as funny!
    1. Re:w00t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a noob, they told me to create a /etc/resolv.conf and I don't know how to do that.

  92. No Fair! by Arandir · · Score: 1
    No fair! It's still March 31st in my timezone!

    But just to reassure all the Real Men and Real Women out there... the BSD systems will not attempt to conform to the LSB by adopting RPM ;-)

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  93. this is almost as bad of news as... by greenskyx · · Score: 1

    The story over at fark.com that Montana is getting a sales tax!!!

  94. Moral of the story by aechols · · Score: 1

    RTFA

    --
    Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
  95. The sad part is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Most of these April Fools posts will be because the /. moderators were taken themselves. Given the number of dups I doubt they even think about it at all.

  96. .src.rpm based disto? by thule · · Score: 1

    I always wondered if one could make a .src.rpm based disro. For all those people that want special optimizations would get their few extra %'s of speed.

    Another reason a .src.rpm based distro would be useful is for non-x86 based systems.

    I don't see why this would be very hard to put together. Maybe people would finally work together to build proper 3rd party .spec files.

    BTW, I just discovered http://www.jpackage.org/. It's a web site that provides a apt-get rpm repository for java programs.

    1. Re:.src.rpm based disto? by Xeger · · Score: 1

      There is, indeed, no reason why you couldn't use RPM for a source-based distro...I just think it's a bit heavyweight for that. You'd be better served with .tar.gz files and a standard for what they contain (build scripts, installed file metadata, and so forth).

      As a longtime Redhat user, I've made it a habit to package even the smallest utilities. Between my personal projects, business obligations and the ties of family and friendship, I administer more than a dozen boxen. Being able to install and upgrade everything as a package keeps me sane -- once I've gotten to work on my desktop system and seen a clean upgrade (or install) work on the server in my living room, I know I can deploy the package in the field and be sure it'll work on 16 real, live production boxen. Do I ever have problems? Occasionally. But I think the mess would be much greater without such a strong binary-oriented packaging system.

      I'm no Redhat evangelist -- use any damn distro that floats your boat! -- and I understand and appreciate the aesthetic that makes Gentoo appealing. But Redhat (and their package system) works for my particular situation better than anything else.

  97. YHBT YHL HAND by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nt

  98. Rest of World by silne · · Score: 1

    And then there's those of us for whom it's late afternoon and were expecting AF jokes over 12 hours ago.

  99. Re:Gentoo rejects .DEB by quinkin · · Score: 1
    Or it can be read as "Another Gumby Gets Duped"...

    Q.

    --
    Insert Signature Here
  100. Perl/Python - Parrot by jmt9581 · · Score: 1

    Whenever I see an April Fool's Joke on Slashdot, it reminds me of the infamous Perl/Python merger that was to be called Parrot.

    If I live to be a million years old, I will never forget a friend in the dorms walking in to my room as my roommate and I were having a good laugh about the Parrot gag. He proceeded to tell us about the revolution in scripting that was going to occur by the merging of the two (I don't think he programmed in either language), and when I tried to interject a "Dude, I think it was an April Fool's Joke" he cut me off and made little motions with his hands like this:

    "Perl!" (waved one hand)
    "Python!" (waves other hand)
    "Parrot!" (Put both hands together to indicate the merging of the two)

    My roommate laughed until we cried, and the thought of it still cracks me up today.

    --

    My blog

  101. Sigh by be-fan · · Score: 1

    You don't expect this type of shit at 1:00 am. That's what I get for browsing so late (apparently, so early :)

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  102. -10 Flamebait [Allowed, it's my birthday] by boris_the_hacker · · Score: 1

    Dear Editors,

    Thank you for you kind presents this year, they were certainly an improvement so far on last year - the stories, even though splitting my sides, were not that great as it was not really all that subtle. But I want to say that I am impressed how subtle you have been with this present, thank you! I would never have even guessed that this was a fake! How stupid I felt when I realised that it was!

    One of the great things about pratical jokes on April Fools is their comedy timing [you couldn't get it wrong with the time being restricted to a lowly 12 hours] but also their shere subtlty.

    Once again I thank you .... er..... I think I got the wrong forum.....

    [Here comes the nice bit]

    Have a nice day everyone :-) With a Game Boy Advance SP - I know I will :-)

    --
    chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
    http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
  103. MOD PARENT UP! by kinnell · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...so we can point at him an laugh ;-)

    --
    If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
  104. Re:God damn it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe someday power users will switch back to Debian, in the meantime keep trolling, bitch.

  105. Oops... by somethinghollow · · Score: 0

    I just ate a gallon of arsenic b/c I was so upset about this RPM adoption, and now it turns out to be April Fools! What a cruel world. He who is valorous and pure of heart may find the Holy Grail in the aaaaarrrrrrggghhh...

  106. Normally they send it on monday by Sarin · · Score: 1

    Normally they send the gentoo weekly newsletter on mondays, I was actually wondering where it was yesterday.
    They must have waited for an extra in order to tell the blisfull news.

  107. Re:Hmm by CoolVibe · · Score: 2, Funny
    Yeah, and to top it off, it's all Microsoft's fault too. Look! A visual studio ad! They are even paying for it! See?!?

    *ducks for cover*

  108. haha by illnatured · · Score: 1

    i just about took a hammer to my harddrive. very funny

  109. evil... by itzdandy · · Score: 1

    this is just evil to do, April fools sucks.

    i read the title and about flew off the handle uintil about 3 seconds later when i realized it was april fools. PURE EVIL!!

  110. Oops, crapped my pants... by Zoolander · · Score: 1

    that phrase has seldom been so relevant! My God, there are some evil people in the Gentoo team...

    --
    Meep.
  111. Actually, it might not be such a bad idea by XNormal · · Score: 1

    Portage does have a binary package format. It might be interesting if pkg was replaced by rpm while keeping the portage ebuilds tree.

    --
    Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
  112. Eew, RPM... by La+Camiseta · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, but even though I use an RPM based distro (SuSE), I can't stand the RPM tools. Why can't they use something much nicer, like the DEB tools. I'd kill for a version of apt-get for SuSE, but nope, I've gotta go through their YaST software to get updates. Icky stuff. Go with the Debian Package Manager, nicer and more friendly.

  113. RPM by manon · · Score: 1

    I can't see why Gentoo has to change to using RPM. The reason I don't like using Redhat or SuSE and have always been using Slackware is partly because of the RPM packaging. In 2002 I switched to using Gentoo (Slackware made me used to compiling ;-) , but now, I have a strange feeling...

    --
    42 + 1 = 42
  114. It's April 1st and I've got 4 mod points left by Xeger · · Score: 1

    My only wish is that there were moderation choices for "Gullible" and "Funny As All Hell."

  115. I knew it wasn't true because... by questforme · · Score: 2, Funny

    monkeys weren't flying out of my butt.

  116. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft will begin distributing their new "GateOS" this week as a replacement for the popular Windows operating system. GateOS will feature a complement of open source software such as FreeSolitaire and OpenExcel. One of Microsoft's financial advisory chairmen was quoted as saying, "To paraphrase a statement our founder Bill Gates made several years ago, '640 Billion ought to be enough for anyone.'"

    Taking a cue from car manufacturers who have resurrected old car designs such as VW, Apple will be unveiling their new 2003 Mac Classic based off the old IIfx model. Even the price tag will be classic at a mere $10,000.

    Hilary Rosen announced today that she apologizes to the music-listening community for all the "bad blood" she has caused over the last few years between the recording industry and consumers. She wants to assure the public that she will personally burn a copy of every Metallica CD for every prepubescent boy in America. Lars Ulrich's lawyer was quick to file a lawsuit, but within hours a counter-suit was filed and Mr. Ulrich is currently serving a term of 5 years in state prison where he will fill the role of "some greasy, tattooed bastard's buttery corn hole," a prison official was quoted as saying.

    Tux the Penguin is to be married this afternoon to pop singer Björk. It seems that Tux never took a geography course in high school, because we all know that Iceland is in fact not covered with ice. However, in a press conference on Monday, Tux announced that the soon to be wed couple will move to Greenland. Tux also announced that he will attempt to pass a vote through the U.N. next month to petition for the two countries to swap names.

    Benjamin Curtis announced yesterday that he would be opening a chain of adult film studios around the U.S. New York University's Tisch School of the Arts was outraged that one of their students would pursue such a controversial business venture, but Mr. Curtis stated that he "couldn't think of anything else to do with all that free stuff Dell provided." His first film is set for an August release and is entitled, "Dude, You're Gettin' a Whore."

  117. Just like /. by KewlPC · · Score: 1

    It's just like the Slashdot editors to post something that was meant for release on April 1 on March 31, thereby ruining the joke.

    Sort of like when they jump the gun and do a "FreeBSD version X is out" post prior to the official announcement by the FreeBSD team.

  118. Re:Gentoo rejects .DEB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only gumbys getting duped are the Debian users. RPM OWNS YOUR SAD DEB SYSTEMS. btw, it's well after midday here, you fucking retarded US-centric cunt. if you're running an international web site, you need to take heed of little things like TIMEZONES.

    So, to recap: DEBIAN SUCKS AND SO DO YOU

    Thank you.

  119. too much information by den_erpel · · Score: 1

    Note: This is an April Fool's joke.

    One of the nice things of April, 1st is able to spot the fake stories from the real ones. Unfortunately Gentoo makes no real sport from this anymore... (cf. the notes under their fake stories) D4mm1t!
    --
    Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
    1. Re:too much information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The first version of the newsletter didn't have that warning. it was only when someone lost their sense of humour that they then forced it to be added.

  120. April? by tekunokurato · · Score: 1

    Neither this story nor this post were actually made in April. Hmmm...

  121. Seriously, why not? by Compenguin · · Score: 1

    you can still have a sources build system and use rpm packages, just use checkinstall or use spec-stubs and installwatch for the file list.

  122. Re:April fools tsarkon reports april FUCKHEADS day by hplasm · · Score: 1
    mediocritomatons

    nice word, not seen that before. Thanks.

    --
    ...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
  123. Other news... by Lolaine · · Score: 1

    Microsoft says it will be switching back to .COM memory executable format. "EXEs had lots of security issues in the past, so we think this will be more secure, but with less functionality" a Microsoft employee said.

    --
    ------- The last Sig. got fired.
  124. Re:April fools tsarkon reports april FUCKHEADS day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stop beating around the bush, tell us what you think.

  125. In related news... by dotgod · · Score: 1

    The RPM development team has just announced a bugfix for all of the circular dependency problems.

  126. DON'T DO THAT TO ME! by makoffee · · Score: 1

    I almost had a freeking heart attack when I read that! For a second I thought all hope was lost for any good in this world.

    --
    -makoffee
  127. Re:From the page "Note:This is an April Fool's jok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apparently they don't have a lot of faith in their users' sense of humor and ability to figure things out for themselves... ;-)

    What do you expect from people who have convinced themselves that burning hours of CPU time compiling on every update is worth the marginal improvement in speed from "optimized" binaries?

  128. Nearly caught me out... by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1

    I was just about to go up in flames, until I thought to look at the calendar. And I don't even use Gentoo - though I have given it some thought, it's just that I really like Slackware.

  129. Example... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, everyone knows it's a joke now, right? Even so, this make something more clear to me. I've been very interested in Gentoo for a while, but I can't try it right now, because I live in the country where we can't get broadband. As I was reading the Gentoo newletter I thought, "What the hell is wrong with these people? There must be some pissed off Gentoo users out there! 'Guess I won't be trying it."

    Then I read the, "This is an joke," part and everything was okay, but it got me thinking.

    If I use a piece of software, I tend to get very attached to it. I realized how it is very easy for a software company to completely pull the rug out from under me with a simple policy change.

    I would think this sort of thing would be far more likely to occur in a closed company, however, rather than with a community-developed product. The company makes changes for money, the community makes changes for the good of the community...

    Any way, great joke!

  130. I get it... by Geopoliticus · · Score: 1

    Oh, I get it. No one really cares about the LSB...

  131. RPMs - bad idea??? by n0dez · · Score: 1

    RPMs are not so bad. I prefer RPMs and TGZs over DEBs. It's an easy way to track, install, uninstall and update packages. Well, the latter isn't pretty easy to do, hehe :) but it's hard to update, and track packages that had been installed from tar.gz. However I guess that every distro has both its good and bad things.

    n0dez

  132. Newsletter ruins the joke by cyclist1200 · · Score: 1

    The newsletter actually says "Note: This is an April Fool's joke." I mean, if you have to explain the joke...

  133. lets go easy on the jokes this year /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    they loose their potency when the ratio of jokes to real info is more than 20% or so, much less the 99% of last year.

    And to those making jokes, try to hide the date a little better as the second anyone sees the date the jig is up.

  134. What's wrong with RPM? by aksansai · · Score: 1

    Is the biggest gripe with RPM the inability to automatically download packages? Is it because people have a big problem with the dependencies inherent to ? Many advocates of Debian's "package management" like it simply because it is easy to install packages from remote servers.

    This is not the philosophy of package management. It is, however, an easy way to retrieve and install packages. "apt-get" is the utility by which packages are retrieved from other servers, cross-checked with a local database for dependency issues and then installed. If such functionality is desired by the end-user, there are utilities that also allow the automatic download and installation of a package and all of its dependencies.

    RPM is a feature-robust, well-developed package management tool that allows developers to intricately control the methods by which applications are installed, configured, updated, and removed. When a spec file (the file that "rpmbuild" uses to make binary and source RPMs) is properly formatted and configured, package management (and dependencies) are a snap. It is an invaluable tool for a developer that wishes to target their package for the majority of Linux installations out in the community.

    RPM has been chosen by quite a few mainstream distributions as well as being supported by third-party software distributors. Without custom modifications, RPM (and its source packages) can be easily configured and installed on a target distribution with little to no hassle. I have been using RPM for many years now and find it to be quite nice and user friendly. As with any software application, it takes a bit of time and training to feel comfortable using it.

    Gentoo's decision to adopt RPM, in my opinion, is a good one - conforming to the LSB brings another distribution into compliance to make the end-user's experience a more consistent one with other mainstream distributions. This approach allows for users to "make the switch" from another popular distribution to Gentoo with relative ease. Gentoo also can continue to enhance portage without having to rely on their own custom package management tool - diverting time and effort into the portage system rather than the build/packaging process. Thus, Gentoo opens up to a established base of already-present packages (including their enhancement patches) to further better their own distribution.

    --
    Ayup
    1. Re:What's wrong with RPM? by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 1

      In two words: Dependency Hell

      All an RPM package can do is tell you what libraries it needs to install properly. It's up to you to go to rpmfind.net and spend your free time searching for the package that provides those libs. Portage and apt-get can tell you what *packages* to install to get those dependency libraries. Portage will even download, compile, and install all a package's dependencies in the right order automagically!

      As for the rest of your post... I hope you were trolling!

      --
      0 1 - just my two bits
    2. Re:What's wrong with RPM? by La+Camiseta · · Score: 1

      Exactly. That's what my biggest complaint about RPM is. I can't stand the dependencies and the incompatibility between distros. Say I try to install something compiled into RPM for RedHat onto my SuSE machine, and because the packages are named/numbered differently, I get a bunch of error messages because they're "incompatible" even though I know that the new piece of software'll play nice with my current installation. But nope, I have go go and try to remember the option to ignore the package dependencies and then use that. So now every time that I try to do an update with YaST, after every piece of software that I check or uncheck, I get a nice warning dialog popping up telling me that I've got a problem.

      I find it a whole lot easier to do just as you said, just use apt-get to download not only the package that I want but those it's dependent upon too.

  135. Re:Gentoo rejects .DEB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh shuttup or we'll bomb YOU next.

  136. Weep Oh Ye Citizens by tarsi210 · · Score: 1

    *weeps*

    It's begun again. The annual April Fool's Day flogging of loyal /. readers. Not only are we subjected to a day of really nasty jokes and heartattacks (Damn you, Timothy, for not waiting till midnight!), but we have to go a whole day without decent news.

    Clever would be to insert joke stories in between real stories. Interesting and amusing would be to sneak in things where you don't expect them, in the middle of normality. No one does something all out for AprFoo like declaring themselves gay for a day. They'll do it for a bit, then quit, because it's purile otherwise.

    I'm a computer professional. I'm a loyal /. reader. And I WANT MY DAMN NEWS! Get a life, boyz....let's try being more clever about it, hrm? </RANT>

  137. Try Debian! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Try Debian. Great package management and stability. Plus you can make it as up to date as you want, just by adding apt sources.

  138. I AGREE WITH THIS POST by Mr.+Nigger · · Score: 1
  139. AND WHILE I'M AT IT... by YOU+ARE+SO+FIRED! · · Score: 1

    You're fired. Not only did you not get the first post, but you also misspelled a five letter word. Five letters - just like the number of days in the work week. God, I love being upper management.

    1. Re:AND WHILE I'M AT IT... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      type == mispell

      Man, sucks to be a data entry person wherever you are boss.

  140. .... is getting 5 moderation points by ZZHead · · Score: 1

    Guess I'll visit the BSD merger story.
    How unexpected.

  141. really? Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tell them to send it over to the Debian crew.

  142. Re:Gentoo rejects .DEB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    we're doing the bombing as well, cockmuncher, but we're hitting our targets and not our own troops. figure it out. oh i almost forgot...DEBIAN BLOWS GOATS

    Thankyou