In a message dated: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:18:23 EDT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>Hi All,
>
> I am fairly new to the Linux User Group (although I do have network
>experience with Novell, Windows, & Mac). I am very interested in hearing your
>thoughts, opinions, philosophies on Installing, removing, managing, and
>running Applications on the Linux platform.
If the archives are up and accessible, you might want to check through them,
since we just had a discussion/debate over this a couple of months ago.
>1. What are the different ways to install (and uninstall) Linux programs?
Installation methods:
Distribution specific package manager (RPM, dep, etc.)
Proprietary installation tool (something like InstallShield)
Source compilation/installation
>And what do you prefer, recommend? Especially for Newbies.
Well, this completely depends upon the environment. Reality is that usually a
combination of the three get used depending upon the circumstances.
If you're talking about setting up a single system for home use, then
you can usually get away with just using dist. specific package manageers
for most things.
My preference is source, since it's the only way I can get things installed
exactly the way I want them and in the place that I want them installed. Of
course, this is because the maintainers of packages and proprietary
installation tools take no time to consider the fact that someone might want
to install something in a place different from where they would install it.
>2. Once installed (say with RPM) how do you know where the program
>installed itself?
Most installation utilities have query options which let you interogate the
database to find out where things are. Of course, there are always commands
like find, locate, which and whence, which will tell you where the executable
itself is located. Though there are several different things which get
installed with a sw package like documentation, config files, libraries, etc.,
all of which are located in different places.
>Also is there a preferred place to install Apps on a Linux box?
This is the subject of much debate. You might want to look at the Linux File
System Standard to get an idea of where things generally go. Then might want
to enter into the /usr/local debate with some us sometime :)
In general, application
executables go in /usr/bin,
libraries go in /usr/lib
config files go in /usr/etc
man pages go in /usr/man
Some people put things they compile themselves into /usr/local.
Check the archives, we had a whole discussion about this not to long ago and
Ben Scott send out quite a verbose and unbelievably well detailed explanation
about this.
>3. Is there a common way to run Linux apps (like an exe file on DOS/Win )?
Not quite sure what you're asking here. To run an app you just run the
executable. This can be done via a command line in a terminal window or via
an icon/menu item. There is no convention for the file name; i.e. the .exe
extension is not required, nor is it hardly used anywhere. Some extension
conventions are:
.pl perl executable
.sh shell script
.ksh Korn shell script
but this is hardly exhaustive a list, nor are these conventions used
extensively.
>This is a fairly important topic to me. After all without Applications a
>computer is just a very expensive paper weight. Maybe it would be possible to
>dedicate a night or some time at one of the gnhlug meetings for this topic. I
>know it might bore some of the seasoned linux folks but it could really help
>out some of the newer users.
I'm not sure quite what you're asking here. Are you asking for a list of what
applications are available? Are you asking for an "Applications Show & Tell"
night?
The Show & Tell night is something long over due, so that's definitely a
possibility.
If you're asking what applications are available, you might want to wander
over to http://www.freshmeat.net and browse at what they have. Additionally,
the GNHLUG website used to have a list of my Linux related bookmarks on it
which would be a good starting point for some apps.
If you're looking for a certain type of app, you may want to either search
freshmeat or ask what people are using here.
I'll answer the first question right now for you :)
There are several office suites available:
ApplixWare a commercial product, quite robust, the best available
in my opion. (they're presenting at tonight's meeting)
WordPerfect Office
A commercial product. Great first attempt, but needs
a lot of work
StarOffice Commerical until 6.0 gets release, then it's under
the GPL. Currently it's free for personal use
KOffice Free with the KDE desktop environment
Not completely there yet, rumor has it that when it's
officially released in October that it's gonna be
great.
GnomeOffice Free with Gnome Desktop Environment
Only a few components available now, but this will
also be fantastic once it's released
Note, none of them do a perfect importation of MS Office docs. However, IMO,
anyone of them is better than MS Office from several perspectives:
- More feature rich
- More stable
- Smaller memory/disk space foot print
- Faster
If you need an office suite, *and* you need to import/generate docs to
exchange with others using Office, I believe all of them can export to Word
2.0 format, and definitely to RTF format.
Hope this helps.
--
Seeya,
Paul
----
I'm in shape, my shape just happens to be pear!
If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!
**********************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the
*body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter:
unsubscribe gnhlug
**********************************************************
