I agree -- I've only used rpms for a little while -- it's some magic that I just don't get or trust, while building from source is solid.

The problems arise when there are dependencies .. sure, I built Perl from source (it's not the first time) but it also affected the stability of this particular system. And it appears that I would have had that problem whether or not I could get the rpm to install correctly anyway. Oh well.

And I didn't think your response was snarky. ;)