Okay, first take a deep breath. Fink is much less non-deterministic and mystical than you seem to think.
Well I am only relating my experiences...
<>Unfortunately, not all packages can be made perfect the first time, and the bindist sometimes has a pretty big lag:( That's why the fink project has so many ways for you to get help instead of just getting frustrated. I've seen several reports of various font and other GUI problems with gaim. I don't know the solution, but for any specific problem someone may have an answer or a lead on things to try to help debug the problem.
Which is why I turn to this list.
Yup, that's a known issue with the iInstaller. It's a commonly- encountered situation, and has been discussed several times on the mailing lists and IRC channel. IIRC you have to use expert mode in the installer and make sure to install the "Tex Programs Developer Extras".
Yes I am aware of that now.
Again, specific problems can usually be addressed as they occur. In this case, fink probably didn't think you had installed the Apple X11SDK package. There's a whole FAQ about this
http://fink.sourceforge.net/faq/usage-packages.php?phpLang=en#apple-x11-wants-xfree86
But if that doesn't solve your problem or you overlooked that bit of documentation, mailing lists and #fink could help walk you through getting it working. Keeping on going hoping a problem will go away is usually asking for trouble.
Sorry Dan, but I find this response a bit condescending. As noted in my original post I have installed Fink on four different computers. I have read the installation document cover to cover and reperuse it before every install. I read the X11 stuff about 5 times before my first Fink install, since it is clear as mud (I don't blame Fink for this - the situation re: X is inherently confusing). So yes, I know exactly what to install from the Xcode stuff ( I already have experience reinstalling it and what you need to do to get that to work, based on past problems with the Xcode installer and the 10.2 -->10.3 upgrade). So all the problems I had followed after I did everything properly and by the book. As I said, Fink gave me a message that it wasn't about to install XFree86 because it found a previous installation, so it obviously WAS aware I had one. AND YET IT WENT AHEAD AND INSTALLED A NEW ONE ANYWAY. Where am I at fault here?
There are a couple of FAQs and other docs dealing with switching X11The whole point is that I didnt want to switch X11 and somehow Fink was forcing itself to do so. Since I have done source/unstable systems before, I find this bizarre. This never happened to me in the past.
packages.
I am a pretty experienced Fink user and have been using Unix for 25 years and Linux for about seven, if I have problems getting this to work smoothly then I can only imagine what someone less experienced goes through. It seems to me there is something problematic with Fink if it is so difficult to get it to work properly. Dismissing my comments with hand waving and pointing me to the FAQs is ignoring the issue.
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