> >>The solution to library hell is to use packages for your distribution > >>from the distributor or a third party. Debian users can "apt-get install > >>pcb" and get a working installation guaranteed. > > > > That's fine for Debian, but what about SuSE, Red Hat, AIX, Solaris, > > Slackware, HPuX, Tru64, Mandrake, BSD, and so on? > > having discovered the ease of using apt-get on fedora, this argument > has holes in it. > > apt is a fedora extra, but yum is in the base package and appears to > achieve the same thing. I reckon apt is a valid solution.
Suppose you are a clueless newbie. All you want to do is design a board. You've never heard of apt-get, nor of yum. You don't know what Qt is, nor do you know what GTK is. You *are* smart, and have some basic inking about how to use unix, and have managed to install FC using the installer. HOwever, that's as much Linux hacking as you really want to do. Now you try to install gEDA & PCB from the current CD ROM. It turns out you need to have the GTK developemnt libs. Bad news. But you go out and install it. Then, the CD runs and you can begin designing. Now imagine what would happen if your installation fails again, this time because you need Qt. What's Qt?!? You go to geda-user and ask. "It's another GUI library, different from GTK." To get it they say "use apt-get". What's that, you wonder? In any event, you try it out, but it turns out you don't have "apt-get" on your box either -- it's an FC add-in. So what do you do next? You install Eagle. That's why I cannot stress enough how important it is to forget your whiz-bang technological solutions and focus on the user experience instead. Stuart
