Re: [newbie] rpm catch22's
Matt wrote: Linux is cool and all, but man can installing software be a nightmare. I couldn't agree more. I have had similar sad sagas more times than I care to recall. For example, I tried to install the latest Gnucash, which I've heard has many improvements over the version that came with my Mandrake 8. When I tried to install the rpm package, I got a HUGE list of dependencies I'd need. There was no way I was going to try to find them, install them keeping my fingers crossed that something else wouldn't break in the process, and see if the silly thing would work. Especially since I don't even know if I'd like Gnucash. I *must* have an easy-to-use checkbook manager on my system, and my trial of the Gnucash that came with the distro was not exactly a roaring success. It made a mess of its import of my Quicken data, which is Requirement No. 1 for any checkbook manager I might consider. I hope they get their act together on package installations. It's got to work better than it does now. --Judy Miner
RE: [newbie] rpm catch22's
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Judith Miner Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 10:49 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] rpm catch22's Matt wrote: Linux is cool and all, but man can installing software be a nightmare. I couldn't agree more. I have had similar sad sagas more times than I care to recall. For example, I tried to install the latest Gnucash, which I've heard has many improvements over the version that came with my Mandrake 8. When I tried to install the rpm package, I got a HUGE list of dependencies I'd need. There was no way I was going to try to find them, install them keeping my fingers crossed that something else wouldn't break in the process, and see if the silly thing would work. Especially since I don't even know if I'd like Gnucash. I *must* have an easy-to-use checkbook manager on my system, and my trial of the Gnucash that came with the distro was not exactly a roaring success. It made a mess of its import of my Quicken data, which is Requirement No. 1 for any checkbook manager I might consider. I hope they get their act together on package installations. It's got to work better than it does now. --Judy Miner If you are interested in upgrading apps beyond those carried in the Security updates add a Cooker source to your Software Mgr. This will auto download and install any depends that might be needed. In the case of GnuCash you will get a glibc warning. Do a force on it since glibc-dev is alao being upgraded. This in not a cure all procedure. Some apps will upgrade simply with no depends, but other will have 15 or more and then you can still end up with conflicts and have to abort the install. The only way for the for the package installation to become simpler is for Linux to stop evolving, for all pkgs except for applications to become frozen, that there be only 1 kernel in use, and that all distributions be the same. Is it just me or does this sound like the way someone esle does things. Charles (-: Forever never goes beyond tomorrow.
Re: [newbie] rpm catch22's
These issues have received a lot of press coverage recently. The new version of GNUcash requires a great many packages that are not included in standard distributions. Hopefully MandrakeSoft will include them in 8.1. The main problem with RPM at present is its lack of an automated dependency resolution system. Debian have the wonderful apt-get system, which can easily resolve these sorts of problems. Connectiva (a Brazilian distro) have ported this to RPM, and Mandrake have it in their contribs FTP directories. Mandrake, of course, have their own urpmi system (as used in Software Manager), but from what I have read apt-get looks to be much better. As for chequebook managers, MoneyDance is supposed to be good, although I haven't tried it myself. On Thu, 9 Aug 2001 00:49, Judith Miner wrote: Matt wrote: Linux is cool and all, but man can installing software be a nightmare. I couldn't agree more. I have had similar sad sagas more times than I care to recall. For example, I tried to install the latest Gnucash, which I've heard has many improvements over the version that came with my Mandrake 8. When I tried to install the rpm package, I got a HUGE list of dependencies I'd need. There was no way I was going to try to find them, install them keeping my fingers crossed that something else wouldn't break in the process, and see if the silly thing would work. Especially since I don't even know if I'd like Gnucash. I *must* have an easy-to-use checkbook manager on my system, and my trial of the Gnucash that came with the distro was not exactly a roaring success. It made a mess of its import of my Quicken data, which is Requirement No. 1 for any checkbook manager I might consider. I hope they get their act together on package installations. It's got to work better than it does now. --Judy Miner -- Sridhar Dhanapalan. There are two major products that come from Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. -- Jeremy S. Anderson
[newbie] rpm catch22's
Linux is cool and all, but man can installing software be a nightmare. I'm trying to install Wine, and I end up with a failed dependency for the XFree86 development headers. Ok, so I go and get the latest rpm for that (XFree86-devel-4.1.0-7mdk.i586.rpm), which in turn needs the latest X libraries. I get the libraries (same version number as above) and find trying to upgrade them causes a problem with XFree86-xfs, it doesn't seem to like the newer libraries. So I go and get the newest rpm for xfs, and try to upgrade my xfs and find I need the latest X libraries to do that! What if I just quitely uninstall xfs and install the newest libraries and xfs before anyone notices? No go, rpm complains. So I go into kde and see what I can do with K's software manager rpm program. I try to get rid of xfs, but it will only let me if I uninstall like my entire haddrive along with it. At this point I just said screw it and installed an old rpm of wine that's happy with my old X environment, but still would prefer to avoid a compromise like that. How do you get around stuff like that? Rip apart my entire computer and start all over? Find another distro that has newer software and install that? I tried installing Wine from the source, but it still complained about my old X headers. What if I had forced one of these installs? Would that have potentially caused problems? Force the library upgrade then upgrade xfs? Matt
