There are a few things I don't like about RedHat.
- The RPM format. After using SRPMs for a bit, it is beginning to make a little sense, but I still don't understand why they couldn't use Makefiles like the FreeBSD Ports tree. Makefiles are standard. Lots of people understand them.
- They throw everything into /usr. Ugh. I like to keep my core system files seperate from stuff I've added. This makes it easier, for example, to backup the system. If I know that /usr has the core system and /usr/local or /opt has stuff I've added, then I don't have to backup /usr as all that can be gotten from the installation CD.
- RedHat makes weird modifications to the way standard packages come. An excellent example is emacs. A nifty feature of one of the newer emacs (say, 20.3 or so) was that it automatically added directories under site-lisp to its search path. For whatever reason, RedHat took away this functionality.
- They ship broken software. For example, the DSO version of mod_perl is known to have problems, but that is the only RPM you can get from RedHat.
- To their credit, the RPM way of making packages seems to be a lot safer than the way the various BSDs handle packages.
Ok, so there are other things I don't like, too.
I just can't think of them right now.
Anyway, to try to cope with RedHat, I've started creating my own RPMs. I'm checking out Debian on my home system, so we'll see how it compares.
Here are my packages.
