Re: [CentOS] You didn't give me some packages, so now I'm giving you some! R, TexLive, LyX, Gnumeric, etc.
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:39 AM, Brent L. Bates blbates@vigyan.com wrote:
You might want to check out Scientific Linux: https://www.scientificlinux.org/They include a number of things that CentOS doesn't, like `R'. I don't know if or how many of the other items you are looking for are on their site. Just check them out for yourself. They seem to try to be more up to date on some things than CentOS. I hope this helps some.
I tried Scientific Linux and found I had to re-build the same things that I rebuild for CentOS, including R, because their versions lagged behind the cutting edge. I switched to Centos hoping that the larger user community would generate more contributions of updated packages for other things, like gnumeric or such. So far, that's not panning out, but I still have hope. I am trying to find my way into the rpmforge rpmrepo or rpmfusion or whatever it will be called.
You can compare the stuff I had to build with it
http://pj.freefaculty.org/ScientificLinux/5/i386/kups/packages/
and it is basically the same stuff I had to build for Centos:
http://pj.freefaculty.org/Centos/i386/kups/packages/
For Scientific Linux, I even had to build Firefox, which required rebuilding yelp.
Maybe people will find this thread and suggest I try the Debian off-shoots, like Ubuntu or Mint. I've been doing that too.
I'm running Ubuntu on my laptop and it is closer to what I need than Fedora or CentOS. It has a slower-changing kernel than Fedora, but more up-to-date applications than Centos. However,I am not installing it in our labs or on public machines because I find it harder to secure. On a workstation that I use personally, it is OK. For someone making the switch from Windows to Linux, Ubuntu may be the preferred option. But in a lab or on a widespread basis, there are some things that hold me back.
1. The basic install of Ubuntu is less security conscious. There's no firewall in the default installation. (That is justified on the grounds that no public services are offered in the default configuration. The default iptables framework allows everything. However, users can easily install services, without realizing that there is no firewall.) It doesn't (by default) secure the bootloader with a password. I noticed that default users have more privilidges in Ubuntu than Fedora (they can use fuse file system). Without having a comprehensive knowledge of Ubuntu, I'm not sure how many other "gotchas" are waiting. Maybe I've not found the CentOS gotchas yet.
2. It includes too many invitations to ordinary users to add/remove packages. If somebody tries to run something that is not installed, the shell replies "you can install that if you type sudo apt-get install xyz". They can't do that, they don't have privileges. The Applications menu has an add/remove package program. I don't want users to be asked to do things for which they don't have privileges. The whole design of the package manager is to not be automatic, but ask for constant user intervention. Not good with many machines.
3. I do not have as much faith in the deb packaging process. For me, this the biggest reason I'm hanging around in the RPM distributions. I learned RPM building from the classic Maximum RPM, which is emphatic about keeping the 'pristine source code.' If you have never built a Debian package, you will will be in for a surprise. You can't even build a Deb package unless you manually untar the source code and create a directory inside it. My experience is that it is much harder to rebuild a debian package than it is to rebuild an SRPM. Most of the time, if you find an SRPM and you want to build it on your system, it is as simple as "rpmbuild --rebuild whatever.src.rpm". I can't find anything comparable to that for Debian. It is always necessary to open up the source package.
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 5:34 PM, Paul Johnson pauljohn32@gmail.com wrote:
I tried Scientific Linux and found I had to re-build the same things that I rebuild for CentOS, including R, because their versions lagged behind the cutting edge. I switched to Centos hoping that the larger user community would generate more contributions of updated packages for other things, like gnumeric or such.
CentOS is strictly a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and yes, it lags quite a ways behind the bleeding edge, but that's what stable distributions do.
For more cutting edge, there's Fedora; bleeding edge is more like Ubuntu or Gentoo, but AFAIK that's pretty much it. Most of the other distributions lag behind a little or a lot, depending on which one you choose.
Now if you want truly bleeding edge software for your computer, and you don't mind massive numbers of security holes and other bugs, there's always Window$! ;^)
mhr
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 7:39 PM, MHR mhullrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 5:34 PM, Paul Johnson pauljohn32@gmail.com wrote:
I tried Scientific Linux and found I had to re-build the same things that I rebuild for CentOS, including R, because their versions lagged behind the cutting edge. I switched to Centos hoping that the larger user community would generate more contributions of updated packages for other things, like gnumeric or such.
CentOS is strictly a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and yes, it lags quite a ways behind the bleeding edge, but that's what stable distributions do.
Right. We know that.
As I said in the original post, I'm looking to have a distribution that is conservative on the kernel, disk support, network drivers, suspend features for laptops, and all of the basic things like that.
I do not want the Fedora experience of having a palm device work in Fedora 6, but not in Fedora 7 and 8, only to spend 20 hours reading through debugger output and advice in bugzilla about what's gone wrong with some kernel module or driver. I do not want to play the game anymore of "does my wireless still work?" on a weekly basis. I don't want to waste my "user time" trying to find out what's wrong in HAL or the the acpi subsystem.
I don't want the desktop to change gratuitously. For me, there's been no user-perceptible improvement in Gnome for about 4 years. As long as it supplies a program menu and a file manager, that's enough.
I do want up-to-date applications that people here actually use, like LaTeX, Emacs, R, Gnumeric, and the other ones I can provide. If I can't get those from EPEL or rpmforge or wherever, I'm willing to build those packages.
I'm offering to share that back to you, but if you don't need it, that's fine.
pj
For more cutting edge, there's Fedora; bleeding edge is more like Ubuntu or Gentoo, but AFAIK that's pretty much it. Most of the other distributions lag behind a little or a lot, depending on which one you choose.
Now if you want truly bleeding edge software for your computer, and you don't mind massive numbers of security holes and other bugs, there's always Window$! ;^)
mhr _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Paul Johnson pauljohn32@gmail.com wrote:
I do want up-to-date applications that people here actually use, like LaTeX, Emacs, R, Gnumeric, and the other ones I can provide. If I can't get those from EPEL or rpmforge or wherever, I'm willing to build those packages.
I'm offering to share that back to you, but if you don't need it, that's fine.
Personally I don't, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who do, and I think it's great that you're willing to do that.
Please don't take my POV as representing anyone but myself.
mhr
Paul Johnson wrote:
I do want up-to-date applications that people here actually use, like LaTeX, Emacs, R, Gnumeric, and the other ones I can provide. If I can't get those from EPEL or rpmforge or wherever, I'm willing to build those packages.
EPEL (and CentOS, to a certain point) are a bit reluctant to offer newer packages of applications which are in the product itself (Emacs, LaTeX in this case). Yes, I know that there's centosplus and that contains code where the itching got that strong that someone actually started to scratch.
There's no real process of getting your packages into CentOS at the moment, rpmrepo is still "finding itself", so my advice would be to offer those packages (and maintenance) to rpmforge, which will be in rpmrepo once that is up. See https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/. Getting it in there also will help people with Scientific Linux or other distributions.
Does that answer some of the questions?
Cheers,
Ralph
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 3:41 AM, Ralph Angenendt ra+centos@br-online.de wrote:
Paul Johnson wrote:
There's no real process of getting your packages into CentOS at the moment, rpmrepo is still "finding itself", so my advice would be to offer those packages (and maintenance) to rpmforge, which will be in rpmrepo once that is up. See https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/. Getting it in there also will help people with Scientific Linux or other distributions.
People keep sending me to RPMforge, but apparently you don't go there yourselves to see you are sending me nowhere. Follow your advice:
Go to the 2nd section called "Packagers". Click either of these:
Building RPMforge packages
Contributing RPM packages
Both links point to pages that have not yet been created.
pj
Does that answer some of the questions?
Cheers,
Ralph
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Paul Johnson pauljohn32@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 3:41 AM, Ralph Angenendt ra+centos@br-online.de wrote:
Paul Johnson wrote:
There's no real process of getting your packages into CentOS at the moment, rpmrepo is still "finding itself", so my advice would be to offer those packages (and maintenance) to rpmforge, which will be in rpmrepo once that is up. See https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/. Getting it in there also will help people with Scientific Linux or other distributions.
People keep sending me to RPMforge, but apparently you don't go there yourselves to see you are sending me nowhere. Follow your advice:
Go to the 2nd section called "Packagers". Click either of these:
Building RPMforge packages
Contributing RPM packages
Both links point to pages that have not yet been created.
pj
Does that answer some of the questions?
When I went to rpmforge.net I ended up here, after I OK'd an SSL certificate problem:
It looks like the site is under construction, but if you click through, I think you might find what you are looking for.
On Jul 29, 2008, at 3:29 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:
People keep sending me to RPMforge, but apparently you don't go there yourselves to see you are sending me nowhere. Follow your advice:
Paul,
i'm sorry that you're experiencing confusion; the websites for RPMforge and rpmrepo are incomplete right now. rather than continuing to beat your head against a sparsely populated wiki, i'd recommend you do the following:
1) subscribe to the appropriate RPMforge mailing list (http://lists.rpmforge.net/mailman/listinfo ) - since you're submitting new packages, you probably want the "suggest" list. you may also want to join the "users" list.
2) post your specfiles to the suggest list. here's an example of someone else posting a spec file (http://lists.rpmforge.net/pipermail/suggest/2008-July/000547.html ), which is then accepted by one of the admins.
i hope you won't be discouraged; even if not everyone in the CentOS community is excited about your packages, i'm sure that someone out there will be, and contributing them to a large, widely-used repository like RPMforge is probably the best way to distribute them.
all the best, -steve
-- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v
on 7-29-2008 12:29 PM Paul Johnson spake the following:
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 3:41 AM, Ralph Angenendt ra+centos-0hLy+LJnySaoYr4blSSd5g@public.gmane.org wrote:
Paul Johnson wrote:
There's no real process of getting your packages into CentOS at the moment, rpmrepo is still "finding itself", so my advice would be to offer those packages (and maintenance) to rpmforge, which will be in rpmrepo once that is up. See https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/. Getting it in there also will help people with Scientific Linux or other distributions.
People keep sending me to RPMforge, but apparently you don't go there yourselves to see you are sending me nowhere. Follow your advice:
Go to the 2nd section called "Packagers". Click either of these:
Building RPMforge packages
Contributing RPM packages
Both links point to pages that have not yet been created.
If you look at the first line of the front page it says "This is work in progress, if you are interested in joining the project please get on the mailing lists."
Actually it says "intested", but I had to fix the typo! ;-P
814bd09640a@mail.gmail.com> X-Rcpt-To: centos@centos.org
Paul Johnson wrote on Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:29:13 -0500:
People keep sending me to RPMforge, but apparently you don't go there yourselves to see you are sending me nowhere.
Nobody could be aware that you do not know about rpmforge and know your way yourself.
-> https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
We all use it, we (most of us) do not package for it. rpmforge is one of the biggest repos for RHEL, if not the biggest. You will find that a few of the stuff you looked for are already there, you will fond some more in other repos like atRPMS, EPEL, CentOS-Testing, Karanbir Singh's repo. Not necessarily everything you want. Partly because what you want/offer is already part of CentOS, just an older version. You should understand that most people *want* to use what comes with CentOS and only add packages from other repos if these are not part of CentOS. As it seems you want to offer newer versions of quite a few packages that are already part of CentOS. I'm sure that some people can take advantage of that. However, you should be aware that most of "us" won't even see these packages as we use the yum priorities plugin to explicitely stop other repos from overriding CentOS base packages. You do not need to join rpmforge for offering your packages. Just create a repo with your packages and announce it. Sooner or later people that want these packages will find you. There are quite a few specialized repos out there that "deal" only in certain types of software or just in one package.
Kai
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
Nobody could be aware that you do not know about rpmforge and know your way yourself.
-> https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
We all use it, we (most of us) do not package for it. rpmforge is one of the biggest repos for RHEL, if not the biggest. ...
thats great, but they really ought to fix the certificates on that rpmrepo.org site, or stop using https
Secure Connection Failed rpmrepo.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate expired on 07/29/08 12:11 PM. (Error code: sec_error_expired_certificate) * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server. * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.
that doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
John R Pierce wrote:
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
Nobody could be aware that you do not know about rpmforge and know your way yourself.
-> https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
We all use it, we (most of us) do not package for it. rpmforge is one of the biggest repos for RHEL, if not the biggest. ...
thats great, but they really ought to fix the certificates on that rpmrepo.org site, or stop using https
Secure Connection Failed rpmrepo.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate expired on 07/29/08 12:11 PM.
Oh come on, that's today :)
I'll require about that on the appropriate mailing list.
Ralph
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 4:18 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
Kai Schaetzl wrote:
Nobody could be aware that you do not know about rpmforge and know your way yourself.
-> https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
We all use it, we (most of us) do not package for it. rpmforge is one of the biggest repos for RHEL, if not the biggest. ...
Probably the most trusted, of the 3rd party repositories.
thats great, but they really ought to fix the certificates on that rpmrepo.org site, or stop using https
Secure Connection Failed rpmrepo.org uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate expired on 07/29/08 12:11 PM. (Error code: sec_error_expired_certificate) * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server. * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.
that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. ___________________________________
Of course it does not inspire confidence, but the site is *BRAND NEW*. Cut them some slack, for 2 or 3 days.
https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge%3E
https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Finding%3E
3ddesktop/ 29-Jul-2008 04:42
That is the first package in the list. All of the packages have today's date on them.
John R Pierce wrote on Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:18:29 -0700:
thats great, but they really ought to fix the certificates on that rpmrepo.org site, or stop using https
Nobody's forced to use that:
http://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
Somebody started using an https URL in this thread and so this story began ..
Kai
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:31 PM, Kai Schaetzl maillists@conactive.com wrote:
John R Pierce wrote on Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:18:29 -0700:
thats great, but they really ought to fix the certificates on that rpmrepo.org site, or stop using https
Nobody's forced to use that:
http://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
Somebody started using an https URL in this thread and so this story began
The people involved in rpmrepo.org are all very serious. I recognize a bunch of the names, from this mailing list.
https://rpmrepo.org/FrontPage/People
My belief is that within a few days, it will be working much better than it is today, the first day.
f9adb2elf4b6068b7bbebb8d@mail.gmail.com> X-Rcpt-To: centos@centos.org
Lanny Marcus wrote on Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:51:12 -0500:
Just to remind again, there is no need to use https here ;-)
Kai
Paul Johnson wrote:
People keep sending me to RPMforge, but apparently you don't go there yourselves to see you are sending me nowhere. Follow your advice:
Go to the 2nd section called "Packagers". Click either of these:
Building RPMforge packages
Contributing RPM packages
Both links point to pages that have not yet been created.
Oh, sorry. The answer is in the FAQ :)
https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/FAQ#head-804b9bdf40aaf584aea4dcdf47a8d41a796b1d...
I hadn't even looked at the rest of the page knowing it was in there.
Cheers,
Ralph
Hi Paul,
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 07:50:51PM -0500, Paul Johnson wrote:
I'm offering to share that back to you, but if you don't need it, that's fine.
regarding rpmrepo, we are still in infancy otherwise I'd say go on submit the packages there! I'm sure many people will find your packages useful!
At rpmrepo we did some serious thinking about how to please bleeding edge *and* conservative users by offering different repo cuts that are controlled by tagging (for example the conservative packaged R would get a different tag than a more recent possibly incompatible or broken version of it and the repo creation scripts would use that tag to distinguish repo assignment).
We are not there yet, so as others have advised try submitting to the merging-into-rpmrepo repos (too many "r"s, I guess :), and they will land into rpmrepo eventually (with you as a maintainer). Or create your own repo. Contact me off-list if you need online space.
You (and others, of course) can also help lifting rpmrepo into production status by joining the mailing lists. We must admit that we have been on hiatus for a while, but it's time to move on and anyone's energy invested in there is greatly appreciated!
In a nutshell: Please submit your packages to one of the merging repos, or setup your own and merge later into repmrepo yourself.
-
Axel Thimm -
John R Pierce -
Kai Schaetzl -
Lanny Marcus -
MHR -
Paul Johnson -
Ralph Angenendt -
Scott Silva -
Steve Huff