Linux Distro Thread
Mar 3, 2005 at 10:43 PM Post #61 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich
Fedora Core's package manager, IMO, sucks majorly. Has trouble checking dependencies, and often times fails completely. At least, when I used it. Besides, the setup programs for Firefox/Thunderbird are very easy. Run 'em as root, tell it where to install (although I must question that - why /usr/lib? /usr/bin is the usual), and voila, done.


I may have made a mistake in installing them in /usr/lib, but when I did a local search of my computer's HDD, I found the old .010 and 1.0 versions of FireFox and 0.9 version in /usr/lib. So, I installed them there in /usr/lib/firefox-1.0.1 and /usr/lib/thunderbird-1.0.

What's up with my desktop? I can't seem to access it. Oh well, I'll figure it out someday as I get through more chapters in my Linux books.
 
Mar 3, 2005 at 11:22 PM Post #62 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich
Fedora Core's package manager, IMO, sucks majorly. Has trouble checking dependencies, and often times fails completely. At least, when I used it. Besides, the setup programs for Firefox/Thunderbird are very easy. Run 'em as root, tell it where to install (although I must question that - why /usr/lib? /usr/bin is the usual), and voila, done.


If the package manager can't handle dependencies, then the system is rapidly going to become unstable. What happens if the Firefox/Thunderbird binaries ship with a version of a shared library that's older than something needed by some other application on your system? Installing without the package manager is going to risk making your system unstable. Do this with enough apps and you're guaranteed to eventually make your system unstable. That's why package managers are so critical on Linux.

Or am I missing something here?
 
Mar 3, 2005 at 11:25 PM Post #63 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy
If the package manager can't handle dependencies, then the system is rapidly going to become unstable. What happens if the Firefox/Thunderbird binaries ship with a version of a shared library that's older than something needed by some other application on your system? Installing without the package manager is going to risk making your system unstable. Do this with enough apps and you're guaranteed to eventually make your system unstable. That's why package managers are so critical on Linux.

Or am I missing something here?


It could have just been my system, too. I seem to be able to mess up Linux systems like no other. However, package managers aren't a necessity. Slackware's done fine. (and no, their pathetic excuse for one doesn't count... just leave it be. It doesn't need one.) Sure, you spend three times as long getting various packages, checking library versions, and so on, but it can work.
 
Mar 3, 2005 at 11:31 PM Post #64 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich
Sure, you spend three times as long getting various packages, checking library versions, and so on, but it can work.


Try installing Gnome 2 or Gnucash this way, with their sea of dependencies. It'll take the better part of a weekend, and God forbid you make a versioning mistake with any one of them. Package managers are critical in the real world, at least until the Linux guys get their heads on straight and figure out a saner solution to library versioning.
 
Mar 3, 2005 at 11:36 PM Post #65 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy
Try installing Gnome 2 or Gnucash this way, with their sea of dependencies. It'll take the better part of a weekend, and God forbid you make a versioning mistake with any one of them. Package managers are critical in the real world, at least until the Linux guys get their heads on straight and figure out a saner solution to library versioning.


Actually, I have installed Gnome manually. Took me about 30 minutes, I think, once I had all the necessary packages. It's not all that difficult. It just dings you and tells you what packages you need. Once they're all there, it installs. Would I choose to do it this way? No, but it's not impossible.
 
Mar 4, 2005 at 2:49 AM Post #66 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich
I seem to be able to mess up Linux systems like no other.


You're a man after my own heart, or we're at least brothers in kind.
biggrin.gif
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 12:27 AM Post #67 of 78
Mar 16, 2005 at 5:06 AM Post #69 of 78
Since someone dredged this thread back up... I just got the new Ubuntu development release - Hoary. Decided I'd give it a try again. I must admit, it does an excellent job at hardware detection. Sound works right off the bat, my pendrive was mounted automatically... very nice indeed. I'm going to fiddle with it more this time. Starting by changing over to Reiser4 (dev release and it doesn't have Reiser4? C'mon...), and a custom kernel. Then I was going to try putting in Yast4Debian. Synaptic isn't all that bad, admittedly, but it feels too much like Windows Update. Tells you what needs to be done, gives you a few options, blah blah. Works, yes, but I love YAST2.

I might try FC4 once it goes final. I wasn't very impressed with FC3, but we'll see.
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 5:13 AM Post #70 of 78
So, does that mean that I got to buy another SAMS Unleased book for Red Hat Fedora CORE 4 in June or July? Heaven forbid a couple hundred more pages (or a few thousand) of reading. Well, at least I get discounts.
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 5:16 AM Post #71 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Welly Wu
So, does that mean that I got to buy another SAMS Unleased book for Red Hat Fedora CORE 4 in June or July? Heaven forbid a couple hundred more pages (or a few thousand) of reading. Well, at least I get discounts.


Nah. Once you know a distro, you really only have to re-learn stuff if a core component is drastically changed. However, the beauty of Linux is that if you know the distro is migrating towards something (which you can find by reading the roadmap or dev posts), you can get that component and start learning it now, so that by the time it's officially released, you're all ready for it.
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 5:20 AM Post #72 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich
Nah. Once you know a distro, you really only have to re-learn stuff if a core component is drastically changed. However, the beauty of Linux is that if you know the distro is migrating towards something (which you can find by reading the roadmap or dev posts), you can get that component and start learning it now, so that by the time it's officially released, you're all ready for it.


Yeah, that is the beauty of Linux. I'm still buying that SAMS Unleashed book though...

smily_headphones1.gif
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 5:38 AM Post #73 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich
Since someone dredged this thread back up... I just got the new Ubuntu development release - Hoary. Decided I'd give it a try again. I must admit, it does an excellent job at hardware detection. Sound works right off the bat, my pendrive was mounted automatically... very nice indeed. I'm going to fiddle with it more this time. Starting by changing over to Reiser4 (dev release and it doesn't have Reiser4? C'mon...), and a custom kernel. Then I was going to try putting in Yast4Debian. Synaptic isn't all that bad, admittedly, but it feels too much like Windows Update. Tells you what needs to be done, gives you a few options, blah blah. Works, yes, but I love YAST2.

I might try FC4 once it goes final. I wasn't very impressed with FC3, but we'll see.


I hope Hoary cleans up for its April release because I notice significant bloat on my laptop compared to the previous warty release and the system keeps on stuttering for whatever reason such that its practically unusable. It is also pretty goofy that there are about 3 GUI front ends for apt-get now, Synaptic, some Update manager, and some Add/Remove programs.
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 7:37 AM Post #74 of 78
Stephonovich,

Reiser4? Boy you really do like cutting edge. Me, I'm still very happy with Warty, although I did install it onto Reiser 3 instead of EXT3. I hear that Reiser always has the disk spinning. And I've read of at least one person who had a crash and lost everything.

I do miss the responsiveness of my 3GHz P4 (I'm now running it on my P4 1.5GHz). But I moved it over to my training machine.

But you really can't expect Hoary to come out with Reiser4, yet. That isn't Ubuntu's mission statement - it wants most stable code. Who knows, maybe they will install it when it goes Gold.

But I won't be joing the Fedora band wagon, again. I feel as if I am a beta tester (which I would be). The idea of rebuilding my OS every 3 months no longer appeals to me. Suse was just a little better - they seem to come out with a new release every six months.
 
Mar 16, 2005 at 11:02 AM Post #75 of 78
Quote:

Originally Posted by wallijonn
Stephonovich,

Reiser4? Boy you really do like cutting edge. Me, I'm still very happy with Warty, although I did install it onto Reiser 3 instead of EXT3. I hear that Reiser always has the disk spinning. And I've read of at least one person who had a crash and lost everything.

I do miss the responsiveness of my 3GHz P4 (I'm now running it on my P4 1.5GHz). But I moved it over to my training machine.

But you really can't expect Hoary to come out with Reiser4, yet. That isn't Ubuntu's mission statement - it wants most stable code. Who knows, maybe they will install it when it goes Gold.

But I won't be joing the Fedora band wagon, again. I feel as if I am a beta tester (which I would be). The idea of rebuilding my OS every 3 months no longer appeals to me. Suse was just a little better - they seem to come out with a new release every six months.



Meh... I heard the horror stories. Have yet to encounter a problem, with I believe 3 distros now I've used it on. It's very, very fast, as well. I noticed a huge speed boost.

Anyway, I just spent about 2 hours playing around with Hoary. I have mixed feelings. I was able to get it configured how I like it, and it seems fairly stable, but I ran into a few odd problems. Like Firefox (1.0 - it's what it came with) throwing up seemingly random XML Parse errors, including things like History and About Firefox. Also, building a kernel (2.6.11.4 patched with latest love sources) failed.

I'm not going to completely give up on it, but FC4 is looking tempting the more I read about it. And then, of course, Gentoo... my nemesis. I've been eyeing this a lot. We shall see...
 
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