Hi !
Thank you for your email !
>> >hundreds of thousands of web wanderers are learning to trivially
>> >and tranparently download and install all manner of windoze stuff.
>>
>> Oke, the difference is, that i never had problems to install software
>> under windows, under linux i normally do. I run my W95 system since
>> september 95 without any problems, the only time i had to reinstall it was
>> when i installed a broken bus master driver and hat not a working one right
>> by hand (well, i could have booted it with the rescue disk and then put in
>> a working one, i bet that would have worked - similar to what one has to do
>> with Linux).
>
>There is a very important reason for this disparity. With Windows, everyone
>has exactly the same system (more or less). As a developer, I know that
you're
>running Windows, so I write a Windows program, and assume that you have
all the
>Windows DLL's that Billy Boy requires you to have.
Yes, but doesn't that make things easier than every programmer uses
probably his own libs ?
But under Linux, I don't
>know what you have. With your new found freedom of choice, you might have
>chosen not to install the gtk, or Qt, or even X for that matter. I don't know
>what versions of shared libraries you have, since they're not automatically
>updated everytime you install a MS program.
That is why i cry for more information and i throw in the thought if it
isn't possible to limit the variety of used libs / packs. I see that that
would queue the problem from the user to the programmer and may make things
in programming even more difficult as they already are. But for example, i
wanted to have a "real" ftp program for Linux, because Netscape can't
resume broken downloads (at least it starts always at the beginning after
the download broke). So i went to www.linuxberg.com and looted their server
having a dozen ftp programs. I tried to install them all one after another,
and finally there was ONE out of twelve that compiled AND worked without
problems (it was TkFTP, similar to the WS FTP from Windows, although i
prefer there CuteFTP). If this is normal, then Linux will stay the system
for hackers, coders and crackers. And for sth "dumb" like an ftp-program
that should run under X with some kind of simple gui (i'm not so keen on
the command prompt always) i don't see why i should spend an hour online
paying big bucks for local calls.
Internet is expensive in germany, even more expensive in Sweden,
Switzerland or especially Austria, where people pay up to 10 $ per hour
only for the phone call. I don't want to blame it all on the people who
have cheap or free online costs, or who have cable modems where a 10 MB
download is done within seconds, but if i have to upgrade, extend, expand
and grow up my system to install any tiny software, then Linux is probably
as expensive as Windows. The difference is that not the software developer
but the phone company gets my money.
To cut it short, i would like to see that programs either as source or rpm
come with detailed instructions and information what is needed to have them
running and where to get it. Even if links may outdate fast, it is at least
a hint for the hunt.
>
>However, I doubt that hundreds of thousands of web wanderers find Windows
>installations trivial. Back when I was running Windows, I had five
different VB
>runtime libraries, three MFC DLL's, and hundreds of VBX's and OCX's, but I
never
>had the right one for the current install. Sometimes the ones I needed simply
>were not to be found except on the newest official Microsoft applications.
Hmmmm, as i said, this problem never hit me til now, maybe it does today.
>
>Trying to install a Windows program without vbrun500 will give you exactly
the
>same kind of errors (if InstallShield bothers to check) as you would get
trying
>to install KDE without Qt.
Who codes in Visual Basic today ? ;) No, that is just a joke, but I see
what you say. But i bet i can get the vbrun500.dll from various ftps, and i
doubt that there will be the same file with different names as i found it
with the mighty libstdc++.so.2.9 and libstdc++.2.9.
>
>> >i've tried rpms cause they are supposed to do most of the work for
>> >me and keep track of everything and I've tried source tar balls
>> >cause they are supposed to give me control of the process.
>>
>> I agree, the rpms are more intelligent than just compiling programs. But
>> it seems that many programmers reject to issue their programs as rpms.
>
>Not every distribution uses RPM's. And not every Unix program is for
Linux. By
>releasing a program as source code with autoconf/automake, a developer can
>target Redhat, Debian, SuSE, etc, along with Solaris, SunOS, AIX, HPUS, Irix,
>*BSD, and every other Unix variety.
I agree and that is a big advantage and there are also programs i
installed from the source without any problem (mpg123 with kmp3 was the
easiest one), but the majority is that i run into severe problems
(especially StarOffice 5.1 - did anyone get that sucker compiled ?).
>
>This scheme makes installation harder, but true portability is assured.
It doesn't have to be harder, i think ./configure make make install is as
easy as a click on an icon - if it works !
>In short, freedom (of any kind) is a trade off. The more the choices, the
more
>the confusion.
Yes, but IMHO most of the confusion caused unnecessarily because infos
about where to get stuff are missing.
To make one thing clear - I still think Linux is great, just wanted to say
that. ;)
Greez
Dave
