[CentOS] Why is yum not liked by some?

[Dave Gutteridge]

>
>This is really a pretty harsh criticism without much indication of
>what your exact hardware/software specs are and what your problem is.
>  
>
Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to totally complain about YUM. I just haven't 
had an easy time of it, and the original poster was looking for reasons 
why maybe some people didn't like yum.

>Can you please post RAM/CPU, specific version of operating system, and
>the result of "yum list updates" if it does complete?
>  
>
512MB Ram, Pentium3, 500Mhz.

[root at localhost ~]# yum list updates
Setting up Repos
addons                    100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
kbs-CentOS-Extras         100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
kbs-CentOS-Misc           100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
update                    100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
dag                       100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
base                      100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
freshrpms                 100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
extras                    100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
kbs-CentOS: ################################################## 1572/1572
kbs-CentOS: ################################################## 61/61
primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================|  49 kB    00:00
MD Read   : ################################################## 124/124
update    : ################################################## 124/124
dag       : ################################################## 2458/2458
base      : ################################################## 1406/1406
primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================|  98 kB    00:01
MD Read   : ################################################## 326/326
freshrpms : ################################################## 326/326
extras    : ################################################## 32/32
Excluding Packages in global exclude list
Finished

>"antiquated" really needs to be old for it to not work with yum.
>
That's good to know. I don't think my computer is "antiquated", although 
it is getting long in the tooth.
It would be nice to clear this detail up.
Two more details:
Yum usually works fine for the first little while after I start the 
computer. When it freezes, it usually occurs after the computer has been 
on for a while, or if I've run YUM a couple of time, say, searching for 
a particular package.
I also keep getting this annoying error message:
/sbin/ldconfig: File /usr/lib/libk3bdevice.so.2.0.0.#prelink#.X8kEMh is 
empty, not checked.
I tried turning "prelinking" off by editing a file... though I can't 
remember off hand which file that was right now. It was weeks ago, and 
it didn't help anyway. The error still happens now and again.

Dave