This is actually a matter of preference. Having dpkg behave in this way allows me to then do "apt-get -f install" to automatically download and grab the dependencies for that package, and then properly install all of them. No dependency hell (meaning tracking them down myself, or yum installing them one by one), so to speak. What is the equivalent of this in rpm?
Somebody else will need to address 6.. I don't understand how RPM can magically allow a user to suid root a binary that debian can't. This looks like something that should be taken care of in a postinst type script and can only be done as root... and the .deb takes and packages up the files with the permissions that they were given when you build the deb package - so if you suid the binary as root, build the deb, and then install it - it will come out suid. I don't understand what he's getting at.