On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote: > Seriously: I think the binary install should do exactly the same > that the (excellent) source install does; i.e. it should put > exactly the same files in exactly the same locations (/usr/local) > that are used by ./configure, make, [become root] make install. It > should just free the dummy user from the compilation step, for > which he/she most probably lacks the tools, and would be > confronted with (to her/him) incomprehensible error messages > because of that.
In that case the RPM install is more appropriate. Seriously when I created the RPM I was wondering if I should still provide the tarball; in general users vote with feet so I put it up for rc1 and watched the statistics. For 1.1.99.1 we have from SF http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=49784 RPM : 9490 downloads Source RPM : 2906 binary tarball : 3976 source tarball : 7148 source patch : 435 So it looks like the RPM is the most popular, but there is still significant demand for the binary tarball. The point about the binary tarball (as Hans Lermen explained it, as far as I know) is that you can quickly and easily check out DOSEMU in your home directory *without needing root*. He thought building RPMs, deb's and so on was a job for distributors (many of them who get paid for just doing that after all, and we don't...) But.. DOSEMU isn't as important anymore as it used to be and some distributions no longer have it. For instance, for Red Hat versions: 6.0 (Apr 99) and all previos Red Hats had it in base (DOSEMU 0.99.10) 6.1 (Sep 99) also (ver 0.99.13) 6.2 (Feb 2000) moved it to the extras in "powertools" (0.99.13) 7.0 (Aug 2000) powertools (1.0.1) 7.1 (Mar 2001) powertools (1.0.1) 7.2 (Sep 2001) dropped it and Bernhard Rosenkraenzer maintained the previous RH rpm privately. DOSEMU 1.0.2 (the one where the binary tarball was introduced) was released in June 2001. > It should (like the source install) also be > independent of freedos, because dosemu itself is independent of > it. I don't agree with that completely; that's why I included FreeDOS in the rpm. The point of the RPM is to be able to: rpm -i dosemu-1.2.0-1.i386.rpm xdosemu and it just works after answering a few questions. As part of those questions the user may point to another DOS if he wants to but he should be able to just press [Enter] a couple of times and it just works. If another DOS is used; yes it's a bit of a waste of bandwidth but that's the price you pay. And anyways many programs (think about mozilla!) are much much larger than the 2MB DOSEMU rpm. Debian users could use alien (or just get the Debian package from Debian; 1.2.0 is in sid now). So -- perhaps your DOSEMU for dummies page should point to the RPM instead? Anyway, i would welcome any documentation updates! There are even a few things on the web you could look at, e.g. http://www.wordstar2.com/dos6steps.htm http://www.linux2000.com/stsplus-linux.html http://www.rkka.org/Campaigns/dehowto.htm http://www.rkka.org/Campaigns/lindosfaq.htm http://ostrab2.potsdam.edu/CIS310/mydos/install.html http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=363 "is the bee's knees as far as installation goes" -- can't be _that_ difficult then ;) About the font problem. I honestly don't know what is going on. Between rc1 and rc2 I added some attempts to desperate get xset +fp ... working but apparently there's still something broken, but only for some people; for me it can find the font just fine. Seems to depend on the X server configuration. But I honestly don't know... I just can't reproduce. Bart - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-msdos" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
