Re: the problem with LINUX

[Shoshannah Forbes]

Hi :-)

On Sunday, Jan 12, 2003, at 02:10 Asia/Jerusalem, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Shoshannah Forbes wrote:

On Sunday, Jan 12, 2003, at 01:19 Asia/Jerusalem, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:

I know tools like apt
that help, but they are no good for computers with no internet
connection, and are horrible over dial up.

apt-get --recon --download-only install package

Will print what you need to download the files required to install
"package". This gives you a nice list of URLs to go and fetch.

Ah, but the other computer is not running linux (it is not my machine).

On the computer that needs to download

You lost me here. The linux machine has no internet connection. The non-linux machine will do all the downloading and burn a CD to be used on the linux.
How can one know which files to download?

Easy to understand, but messy.

Isn't scattering files all over the place messy? Dunno. Sounds like trouble to me.

The whole point of the linux FSH (File System Hirarchy) standard is that
the packaging system is good enough to keep track of files.

Notice- the file system. Not the end user.

 Therefore
there is no problem with "cluttering" /usr/bin and /usr/lib : you can
easily tell to which package a file from there belongs

How? (for the middle ground user, not the "super power user").

In theory- you are correct. in practice, this doesn't work, especially
for the novice user- RPMs just fail due to dependency problems way to
often.
<snip>

Again: this problem is caused because people use rpm directly.

* I guess I missed some basic stuff. Then what are RPMs for?
* I don't think that my Grandmother would be able to use graphical wrappers for APT- they are still too complex. No to mention that many applications do not appear in a repository.

The above was information about RPM packages. Your grandmother naturally
need not bother about rpms, so the question should be "how do I run this
program"

I know my mother wants to know where the application she installed is. She has asked me to show her how to find out (in Windows).

But how I, as a user, can tell from the menu where the application
really is on my hard disk?

a. Why is that important?

Why not? Maybe it makes me feel better?

b. look at the KDE shortcut? /usr/lib/menu/whatever ?

* I am not using KDE (and who says she will?)
* Why the user needs to go to a completely different place to find information about the object?
BTW, I admit that I still don't understand the logic that decides what to put in the user home directory and what to put in /usr/lib
* Again, linux has no middle ground between "know nothing, don't care" and "super power user".

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