Hello Sir and dear GNUers, Thanks for the reply... your replies are beginning to get me to think a bit different... as Sir said, do not trust all sites, true... but you could / should trust the developers' sites / product homepages, right? Now, what I meant was that instead of the developer offering three .rpm (Redhat, Suse, Mandriva), two .deb (Debian and Ubuntu), one .tgz (Slackware) etc..., if he / she offers one uniform distro-independent package, won't it be great, for him as well as us?..... There I go again, right? Yes. I know it is easier said than done... but do you all atleast agree with me? If that is the case, then one day we can hope that this will be a reality where one single package can be used in all the distros. This will also make it much easier to present the GNU/Linux case to the hardware (portable players, digital cameras, high-end cellphones etc. as soon as they are launched) driver developers, where they can pack a single package which can used by the whole community.
And as Mahesh Aravind said there might not be much of an intermediate GNU/Linux users group. Thinking in that direction now..... ----- Original Message ----- From: Mailinglist-request at ilug-cochin.org To: Mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org Subject: Mailinglist Digest, Vol 33, Issue 1 Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 12:00:11 +0530 Send Mailinglist mailing list submissions to Mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://ilug-cochin.org/mailman/listinfo/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to Mailinglist-request at ilug-cochin.org You can reach the person managing the list at Mailinglist-owner at ilug-cochin.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Mailinglist digest..." Today's Topics: 1. help requested on ext2 lib (Nishan Nazeer) 2. Re: GNU/Linux ready for the desktop? (M.Balakrishna Pillai) From: M.Balakrishna Pillai <mbpillai at asianetindia.com> To: This List discusses GNU/Linux & GNU, GPL Software <Mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org> Subject: Re: [Mailinglist] GNU/Linux ready for the desktop? Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:30:31 +0530 On Sat, Feb 25, 2006 at 10:24:41PM +0530, Zaheer Mohamed Kozhakkaniyil wrote: > Hello fellow 'GNU/Linux'ers, > > FreeDOS I still keep) in mid-2002, and even when I have to use Ms > systems in my office, at home I have got my parents to work / > check mail / hear music / see movies / play games on our GLx box. > Yes, at their > level / age and for that sort of 'just working', it is possible, after I > had setup / configured everything. Say it loudly. Now the society needs more people, who know how to configure GNU/Linux systems. We have to learn and teach others. > not because of its security / safety / stability or anything of that > sort, it is just for that feeling of independence that I get, that I > continue using GNU/Linux. THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT. > > And 'not standardized' means, the literal meaning of those two words > used. This is because of the vast no. of distros and the umpteen no. of > packaging systems we have. That is why I am always trying to promote > something which is distro independent. But, alas, those who control the > GNU/Linux world, G/LUGs like you never get interested in something > brought up by somebody who tries to unify the distro world and moreover > you people continue with your distro / packager wars by trying to > establish its supremacy. I am sorry, if I look like complaining, because > that would be the last thing I want to do, since the part played by > G/LUGS in promoting GNU/Linux is beyond explanation. If we have only one method - it will perform the job but, if we have more than one - can compare merits and demerits - adapt useful features of the other methods etc. > > I believe, a standard, distro-independent, unified type of a packaging > system / package installer with a click and execute methodology would be > the first step to standardize the GNU/Linux desktop. synaptic (Debian Gnu/linux) does the same thing. There are such utilities in other distributions also. These utilities install packages from TRUSTED/TESTED sites. > Just imagine, if > from a Linux SW website, if a user is able to download certain packages > and install it on my desktop, what would stop him / her from downloading > / installing it? Donot trust all sites. It should be a properly working package and should satisfy library dependencies. Debian GNU/Linux users can use http://apt-get.org or http://backports.org > Instead, when I see a source package, with compiling > being one of my worst enemies (and of the group I represent) and with a > reply that I get in binary language, why should I waste time trying to > download / install it? Now, if there was a 'unified package' with a more > sensible reply with the missing dependecies, I could search for the > dependencies on the net which would be available in the 'unified package' > itself, which I could download / install it in no time and get the > original package working. Never install binaries unless we know what it does. But if it is sourcecode, at least in theory, we can learn what it does. > Please can you see the difference?. I do not > have much hope, even this time, but I am trying to make you kindly > understand the difference in having a click and execute type of > a unified, distro independent type of package(r). We can do it using alien (not a single click method). I feel it is possible to develop a GUI, which use dpkg, rpm, emerge, alien etc select necessary utilities and install pakcages, at the click of a button. > I undestand the practical difficulty in bringing up such a thing, but I > just want you to know and understand the difference it makes to the > common man like me. And, please don't say the common man doesn't want to > use GNU/Linux. The common man does want to use it, but it's the absence > of these type of things that is stopping him from using it. Now, if you > understand this concept, the other things that are required will slowly > fall into place. There are much more which I want on my GNU/Linux system; > I will slowly write it all down, when I have time. And thank you so > much for your patience. FLOSS - has the habit of releasing packages more frequently - mature users use and test it. Once the testing is almost complete, normal users can use it (with out much problem). The click and install method may create problem in this area - using newly released packages. Unix like operating system has small small utiities which does its job well. We can integrate ( pipe output of one application to input of another application) and get very useful results. An example: We need a printed copy of say byteofpython.pdf (110 pages) on a4 paper. Printing on both sides of the paper needs 55 sheets. The letters are big, it is readable if we can print 2 pages on the same side of the paper (ie 4 pdf pages on sigle sheet of paper - both sides). This requires only 28 sheets. If we can fold the papers, it is more convenient, it is just like a book. The page numbers will be in order only if: pdf-page 4 and 1 are on the same side of the sheet and 2 and 3 on the other side, and similarly for other pages: One side Other side 4 1 2 3 8 5 6 7 12 9 10 11 etc. install psutils and xpdf-utils (may be already installed) xpdf-utils for pdftops programme. psutils is a set of programmes psbook rearranges pages into signatures psselect selects pages and page ranges pstops performs general page rearrangement and selection psnup put multiple pages per physical sheet of paper psresize alter document paper size epsffit fits an EPSF file to a given bounding box We can use psbook and psnup to do our job. pdftops byteofpython.pdf this will create byteofpython.ps psbook -s 4 byteofpython.ps byteofpython_psbook.ps this will re arrange the pages as (size of each page is a4) [4] [1] [2] [3] [8] [5] [6] [7] [12] [9] [10] [11] etc now use psnup to put two pages per physical sheet of paper psnup -2 -pa4 byteofpython_psbook.ps byteofpython_psbook_psnup.ps psselect can be used to select all odd and all even pages or use the option in printing utilies to print all odd pages first and then all even pages on the other side of the papers. We can also use ps2pdf (install gs-common package) to make a pdf of byteofpython_psbook_psnup.ps ps2pdf byteofpython_psbook_psnup.ps this will create byteofpython_psbook_psnup.pdf With regards M.Balakrishna Pillai _______________________________________________ Mailinglist mailing list Mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org http://ilug-cochin.org/mailman/listinfo/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org Zaheer M K GNU/Linux user #351122 Registered at http://counter.li.org -- ___________________________________________________ Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://ilug-cochin.org/pipermail/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org/attachments/20060311/8bf777c2/attachment.htm
