Quoting Gene Dascher <gedascher@multiservice.com>:

> sed
> 's/RedHat/Windows/g;s/RPM/DLL/g;s/Linux/PCs/g;s/Mandrake/Corel/g'
 
> Sounds familiar!

To quote my Yankee uncle, "ayuh".

A really different situation, DLLs being libraries and RPMs being 
software packages, but similar.

But what's to keep "make" from installing incompatible code? How do you 
back it out again? Wouldn't APT/GET have the same potential problems?
(Having lived in RPM land since I started, I genuinely don't know.)  

The answer to the first question is the same thing that answers the 
potential problem with RPM's: put the proper tests in the package.  I 
have actually seen one program that offered "make uninstall", but only 
one in several years of running Linux.

The truth is that with any system, unless you are careful and 
deliberate when making changes to the system, and unless you make sure 
that the changes you make are compatible with the system you're 
changing, and unless you have a fallback image to restore, you can hose 
yourself.  

It's a matter of good coding and good management practices, not 
platform evangelism.

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