Linux Chronicles, The Chicken or the Egg... |
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Well, I spent several hours yesterday playing around with the CD disk full of Linux software from the Linux Format magazine I bought recently. Well, I typed a lot of ./configure , make , su -c "make install" . I even got to install one RPM. But I found out that, for this collection of cutting edge new software, it isn't so easy to install. There were all kinds of dependencies I couldn't resolve so easily. My favorite was on an XScreensaver program, after typing ./configure, I got a message that my machine didn't have " bc" , which I was informed had been a part of Unix sine the 1970's, so my "distribution should get a clue". Go figure... I tried to install CoolRay, PyQt, and several other programs unsuccessfully. Curiously, although I began by getting frustrated, I actually became intrigued and maybe even learned a little. I feel deep down inside that if I really wanted to run any one of these programs, I could get it successfully installed if I kept at it. It certainly helped that I did successfully install the
Python 2.2 upgrade (I had been using the Python 2.1 that came with my Mandrake
distribution), a program called Pychecker that checks Python programs for
subtle errors, a Python wizard for doing GUI designs, and a 3.0 version
of the GCC compiler. I don't know what it means that I got a few programming tools installed correctly and nothing else. But I'll take what I can get! Look, I think this exercise illustrates that installing software on Linux still needs to improve. This is not good enough for the general public. Myself, I kind of like it for now. I'm learning. Ron Stephens
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