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[Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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[Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#1 Post by brainchild »

SUSE-family operating systems originally lacked any respectable package system. Today, they use RPM.

RPM, RedHat Package System, was of course developed by RedHat, for their family of operating systems.

The Debian family has used APT since its beginning. Both RPM and APT have become much more advanced than their earliest manifestations, with the added layers for repository interaction representing among the most important developments.

The defunct effort for the Linux Standard Base conceived of a specification by which all Linux distributions would install and run software, by their native design, from the same binary executables and packages. The idea seemed to some a sensible way to unify the diverse and fragmented world of Linux-based operating systems, but ultimately, it would have prevented any from evolving along its own path.

Major Linux-based operating systems have not achieved nor earnestly sought full unification for native binaries or packages. The solutions having most closely reached such ends are Flatpak and Snap, but they are too high-level for the realities of managing a core system. Even so, the various operating systems have expressed some convergence strictly with respect to package management. Widespread adoption of RPM has become noticeable. It may be seen that RedHat, SUSE, and Debian are often considered the three major families of Linux-based operating systems, and two of them use RPM. SUSE has developed a sophisticated tool for dependency resolution, which I believe is one of many examples of how RPM and the tools supporting it have become superior in capabilities to APT. Another is RPM-OSTree, from RedHat.

I have been particularly encouraged by Fedora Silverblue, as a next-generation administrative paradigm, which, through RPM-OSTree, seeks to unify an immutable base system with transactional updates that allow package-level granularity.

For Debian to benefit from ongoing enhancements of such kinds, the capabilities must be developed independently for APT. It is quite a burden, especially since RedHat and SUSE have income from commercial activities. An effort is underway called APT-OSTree, but one might begin wonder whether APT is even still needed.

A possible future direction is one intensely radical, which most will find repellent, even if only due to the immensity of the effort. Yet, as a thought experiment, suppose Debian were to follow a path of transition to RPM. Along such a course, Debian would still retain its independent character, but also benefit from the varied ongoing advancements in RPM. Debian packages would still be built for Debian, but the basic mechanics of management would be unified with the broader ecosystem.

Can you conceive of a world in which Debian uses RPM?
Last edited by brainchild on 2022-12-02 03:59, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#2 Post by Bulkley »

Can you conceive of a world in which Debian uses RPM?
No.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#3 Post by CwF »

Stupid idea, simply stupid.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#4 Post by brainchild »

It may be infeasible. It may be unimportant. It may be uninteresting. I think it not helpful to call the idea stupid.

The intention was not to give a proposal, but to offer a thought experiment. If there is nothing substantive to be said, then there is nothing to be said.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#5 Post by CwF »

At the current stage of things the function is arbitrary.
It would solve what?
Unification of ways is not an answer.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#6 Post by brainchild »

CwF wrote: 2022-12-02 04:51 At the current stage of things the function is arbitrary.
It would solve what?
Unification of ways is not an answer.
The idea is unification of effort, of everyone not reinventing the wheel, of one group contributing, such that the other groups benefit, and the reverse.

In an alternative world in which RPM would replace APT, for example, then the group building APT-OSTree might instead contribute to advancing RPM-OSTree, or its current contributors might contribute to other projects needing help.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#7 Post by CwF »

brainchild wrote: 2022-12-02 04:58 The idea is unification of effort, of everyone not reinventing the wheel,
You do understand in the scale of things here, rpm is a go cart wheel and the deb wheel is a truck. Reinventing the wheel is the hallmark of linux; its superiority, and its Achilles' heel.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#8 Post by sunrat »

RedHat and Suse should switch to using APT. PCLinuxOS, based on an RPM core (Mandrake IIRC), has already done that many years ago.

Moving this to Offtopic. It's about random dreams, whereas the subforum it was originally posted in is about Debian Development.
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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#9 Post by brainchild »

CwF wrote: 2022-12-02 05:07 You do understand in the scale of things here, rpm is a go cart wheel and the deb wheel is a truck. Reinventing the wheel is the hallmark of linux; its superiority, and its Achilles' heel.
Of course, reinventing the wheel is in large part the nature of the Linux ecosystem, but so is sharing. The larger perspective has always been of balance. RedHat and Debian in principle might anchor to or support completely parallel projects that solve the same problem as systemd, and certainly many other new supervisor projects have emerged, but instead, both efforts both have adopted, and perhaps in some sense adapted, the same component. Divergence and convergence happen for different reasons.

Sharing a package management system but not binaries or packages themselves would represent a balance between the Single Linux Base on one extreme, which failed, and on the other, APT and RPM continuing to advance with essentially the same overall capabilities.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#10 Post by CwF »

CwF wrote: 2022-12-02 04:51 It would solve what?
brainchild wrote: 2022-12-02 03:34OSTree
I'm not a fan.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#11 Post by brainchild »

CwF wrote: 2022-12-02 05:39 I'm not a fan.
Well, certainly you've put your cards on the table.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#12 Post by el_koraco »

brainchild wrote: 2022-12-02 04:58 The idea is unification of effort, of everyone not reinventing the wheel, of one group contributing, such that the other groups benefit, and the reverse.
This is Microsoft speak, you bots have been harping on about this since the 90s, and yet the fragmented Linux desktop is still here.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#13 Post by canci »

Red Hat was the first distro I used back in 1999. I've used several versions of Debian or Red Hat/Fedora and even SuSe since that time.
In all that time, one thing repelled me from using rpm-based distros, and that's bloat. There's always been a beauty to how fast dpkg,apt et al were compared to all of the tools Red Hat used. I mean, Red Hat haven't rewritten their package managers at least 3 times ever since I've been using Linux for nothing. Meanwhile, apt has always felt very lean and stable for me, even when using Sid. I don't think this sort of bloat in a package manager is something I'd want for my distro. Nor would I like this "break things very often" mentality to creep into Debian. On my laptop that I use for work and mission critical stuff, it's Debian Stable, maybe OpenBSD in the future.

OS Tree as another point entirely, but also related, doesn't really offer much new to me that I'd risk the sort of carefully curated experience that Debian is. But I'm also not the target audience for that. I don't rely on using tools in my job that are only available from proprietary vendors, nor do I really need a constantly changing software stack so that switching back and forth from one snapshot to the other would be of much use to me. I also don't really buy much new hardware except for the odd gaming controller every 5 years. So I don't really need a system like that. On my gaming machine, I do need certain stacks to update frequently, but I find that using Manjaro, which just carefully updates the software stack and where I add a few things here and there through AUR or Flatpak, is sufficient for me. Maybe if I were more of a noob, something like Gnome Software which does everything magically through OS Tree would be more viable for me? I don't know.
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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#14 Post by brainchild »

el_koraco wrote: 2022-12-02 08:43 This is Microsoft speak, you bots have been harping on about this since the 90s, and yet the fragmented Linux desktop is still here.
The idea is not about eliminating fragmentation. Fragmentation and unification have both been constant. In fact, much that had been fragmented in the past has later been unified. In turn, newer technologies have tended to be heavily fragmented, but then, as their different solutions have evolved as competitors in the some domain, the advantages of either have become less noticeable, and the mere observation of incompatibility has become more noticeable.

Believe me, I'm not trying to change the overall thinking or ideals of the Linux community, and I'm certainly not wishing Debian would become more like some other distribution or operating system.
Last edited by brainchild on 2022-12-02 11:12, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#15 Post by brainchild »

canci wrote: 2022-12-02 09:41 I mean, Red Hat haven't rewritten their package managers at least 3 times ever since I've been using Linux for nothing. Meanwhile, apt has always felt very lean and stable for me, even when using Sid.

OS Tree as another point entirely, but also related, doesn't really offer much new to me that I'd risk the sort of carefully curated experience that Debian is.
Yes, RedHat has done much rather badly, and the early and even some later RPM-based tools have not been wonderful. At the same time, the earliest versions of the basic tools for Debian packages were quite weak compared those available today, even if only because the feature set has become more advanced. Perhaps Debian packages needed less fixing, but both RedHat and SUSE have contributed much to RPM, and continue to do so. The modern tools are quite capable, and in some ways I think even more advanced and flexible than Debian tools. Further, because their designs properly separate concerns, it is easy to develop enhancements or changes without breaking compatibility of file format.

OSTree and especially the hybridization with package managers represents more than is readily apparent to those not familiar. It does make a system more resilient against mistakes of inexperienced users, which is important for broader adoption, but also just as much benefits administrators and developers. Many of the concerns of administrators, such as snapshots, backups, and provisioning, as well as package and release upgrades, are greatly helped by the capabilities being developed for example in Fedora Silverblue. Server and IOT deployments gain no less than desktops.

I have begun to believe that the concept is the next phase of development for package management. Compared to tarballs and installer scripts, package managers have offered a wonderful level of automation and reversibility, which has become nearly indispensable, due to the complexity of modern applications, but many artifacts remain outside their control. If you have not read about RPM-OSTree, then I suggest you take a look, when time permits. The design considerations are quite sensible and thoughtful, and not in the least targeted for noobs. In fact, while tools you mention such as GNOME software and Flatpak of course hide the details of OSTree from the user, RPM-OSTree exposes them. OSTree shares conceptual features with Git, and in some sense the benefits Git offers to developers for a project code base, RPM-OSTree offers to administrators for a whole system or even group of distributed systems.

The paradigm also may help applications develop greater robustness, by keeping systems more consistent with each other, due to running from common base images that may be comprehensively tested before release, and by making it much easier to identify local site issues that are causing a problem in some application. In a future in which the model would have become standard, I predict application developers would expend a much smaller portion of their efforts debugging fringe cases or resolving user-submitted issues, and have more opportunity to develop features they consider truly interesting and useful.
Last edited by brainchild on 2022-12-03 02:00, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#16 Post by canci »

brainchild wrote: 2022-12-02 10:19 It does make a system more resilient against mistakes of inexperienced users, which is important for broader adoption, but also just as much benefits administrators and developers. Many of the concerns of administrators, such as snapshots, backups, and provisioning, as well as package and release upgrades, are greatly helped by the capabilities being developed for example in Fedora Silverlight. Server and IOT deployments gain no less than desktops.
Using a curated Debian Stable system and sticking to the way Debian is meant to be used also prevents you from bogging your system and is IMHO much more lean and efficient, but wit the added benefit that bugs have been squashed for a bit longer than is possible with Fedora's 6 month release cycle where everything is a bit too current for my taste. I need the curated distribution experience that a fast moving upstream target cannot offer me. And Debian doesn't have to cover everything. So maybe an IOT device where customers expect a constant barrage of features isn't Debian's strong point, but that's OK. The Debian way would be to have a lean server or IOT device based on KISS principles anyway.
brainchild wrote: 2022-12-02 10:19 In a future in which the model would have become standard, I predict application developers would expend a much smaller portion of their efforts debugging fringe cases or resolving user-submitted issues, and have more opportunity to develop features they consider truly interesting and useful.
I agree that debugging distro specific errors must be a nightmare for upstream and that in a lot of distros package maintainers just won't have the time or knowledge to debug those. However, the crux herein is that a more unified Linux ecosystem is hampered by the different philosophies different distros have. In that sense, it might maybe be of use if certain distros used a stack that is more unified. E.g., Canonical and Red Hat using one core system. However, I somehow doubt this is going to be enough for Debian. Using RPM is the best example: You've seen a couple of people downright revolted by the idea, and sadly it's not all fanboiism in that case, since a lot of us have used rpm and just find the experience to be bloaty. In the time Fedora does an update, I've updated 10 Debian computers and made coffee. :D If I add Flatpak into the equation and managing several snapshots of the system, deciding which of the 3 images to ban from my laptop hard drive... It all sounds more involved and less KISS-y than I'd like it to be. But if OTOH these tools end up being more lean like apt or Pipewire and if it's the next best thing since sliced bread, and if on top of that it's easy to incorporate into a slowly moving, LTS-y target like Debian, then we can talk about it.

EDIT: One thing that I miss in Debian, and that OS Tree and the likes might offer, is things like fine-grained permissions for programmes. Is that a thing over there? I know it's sort of there in Flatpak.
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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#17 Post by el_koraco »

brainchild wrote: 2022-12-02 09:42 The idea is not about eliminating fragmentation. Fragmentation and unification have both been constant. In fact, much that had been fragmented in the past has later been unified. In turn, newer technologies have tended to be heavily fragmented, but then, as their different solutions have evolved as competitors in the some domain, the advantages of either have become less noticeable, and the mere observation of incompatibility has become more noticeable.

Believe me, I'm not trying to change the overall thinking or ideals of the Linux community, and I'm certainly not wishing Debian would become more like some other distribution or operating system.
Debian is Debian because it is not RedHat. There is a lot of feature creep there though, so a theoretical danger exists that adopting "new technologies" will make us all have to find another distro. Personally, I have started to tame my system to behave more like in the Squeeze/Wheezy era. The past ten years of RedHat pushed userspace development have been underwhelming, to say the least.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#18 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

@brainchild:
Can You imagine a world in which RedHat uses APT?

Thanks to APT and Debian package build system, RedHat could almost immediately start supporting more HW architectures, not just 2 (x86_64 and AArch64).

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#19 Post by Bulkley »

The reason I switched to Debian is Apt. Because I didn't know any better, I started my Linux adventure with Red Hat and other distros that used RPM. I was totally frustrated with "RPM Hell" as we called it. When I first tried a Debian based distro it was like a huge weight had been lifted off.

The thread proposition has it backwards. Imagine a world in which Red Hat uses Apt.

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Re: [Discussion] A world in which Debian uses RPM

#20 Post by brainchild »

el_koraco wrote: 2022-12-02 12:13 Debian is Debian because it is not RedHat. There is a lot of feature creep there though, so a theoretical danger exists that adopting "new technologies" will make us all have to find another distro.
Debian will remain Debian and not become RedHat. Some systems fall vulnerable to feature creep, but mostly all continue to evolve, as Debian too has done since it began, in order to stay useful and relevant. What in particular are you characterizing from the discussion as "new technologies"? RPM is not so new. The model of Fedora Silverblue, meanwhile, has been of a separate operating system built from the package base of Fedora. The main Fedora distribution has not in any sense adopted RPM-OSTree, which is still an experimental concept.

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