[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Randy Edwards) wrote:
> > But how do I, for example, install a newer version of windowmaker
> > or netscape? There are several .deb packages, and I don't know
> > which of them to use.
>
> Just use dselect, browse through the various descriptions of the
> *.deb files.
But how do I tell dselect where these .deb files are? I have them on
my harddisk, not on a Debian CD. To me it looks like dselect always
wants a complete Debian file tree.
> > Another problem: my Debian stable is so outdated. New packages for
> > wmaker etc. usually need newer versions of other packages.
>
> If you read up on apt-get ("man apt-get") you can use that to
> solve the various dependency problems when upgrading. Yes, this is a
> problem, but with that said, potato will be released "real soon now"
> and this is the "right way" of "solving" this particular issue.
I begin to like apt-get. I used it to update some packages, and it
worked well. This is really cool. If only my internet connection was
better...
> > I like the Debian philosophy, but I also see that soooo many things
> > don't work well/correctly/at all.
>
> I don't know if I'd term it that way. If you install a
> stable-only system, it works, and works extremely well. Ditto for
> potato (though, of course, it's still unstable). The problems come
> from mixing and matching slink and potato -- two different versions.
> That isn't officially supposed to be done; there's an upgrade
> procedure, but mixing isn't part of the plan. So it's not surprising
> that things don't work smoothly when mixing two different versions.
Right.
Looks like my main problem is than potato isn't released yet. At the
moment I'm still thinking about moving to Mandrake. I have done some
things with it (it's installed under VMware), and nearly everything
worked. While with Debian I often encounter some problems.
For example, yesterday I tried encode some MP3s. I downloaded the LAME
source, entered make, and it didn't work. I removed QTK support, and
it still didn't compile because of a missing libtermcap. So I looked
at the Debian ftp site, only found a termcap-compat package, but that
did not help. And once more I have no clue what to do.
I tried the same in Mandrake. It didn't compile either, because it is
missing a termcap.h. I got this file from Debian, and with it
everything is fine, it compiled. GTK support also worked. It's just a
bit silly to simulate a whole PC running Mandrake for encoding music,
isn't it.
I want to start working with my system, and I see that many things
don't work well, like playing .mp3 files, or viewing mpeg animations.
Or power management. I read some docs about it, didn't understand
much, and skipped this for now. But in Mandrake it's already there,
without me having to do anything about it.
Of course I have not done as much in Mandrake as in Debian, I'm sure
that also Mandrake has its problems. But I really was impressed how
easy the installation was, and what things are already configured. In
Debian it took me some time to do the basic configuration, like
compiling new kernels etc. Or getting Netscape to work. (Whose idea
was it to put mozilla onto the Debian CDs? I think this is the worst
Linux program I ever encountered.)
> To draw an analogy to the DOS world, what would happen if you were
> to take a Win95 machine and start mixing Win98 components and *.DLLs
> into that system? You'd have a nightmare on your hands. While slink
> and potato play pretty well together when mixed, it's analogous to
> the same idea as Win95/Win98.
Okay :)
On the other hand, installing Windows software usually only needs a
double click on Setup.exe...
Alex
--
Alex Schuster [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key available
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
