On Tuesday, February 01, 2005, at 05:35AM, Axel Thimm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >In the long run smart will be the recommended package manager at >ATrpms.
First let me say that I appreciate the work you do Axel, as well as everyone involved in this project, and this isn't meant to be anything negative toward you. It's just one of my hot-button issues :-) I just don't understand why it (software installation) can't be as easy as it is on a Mac. On a Mac, in most cases, installing software consists of dragging the application from the file you downloaded into the Applications folder. That's it. To uninstall the application, you drag it from Applications into the trashcan. There is no descent into dependency hell. No "glibc-2.4.5.2-rh9-1.6 is needed by your kernel, if you upgrade to 2.4.5.2-rh9-1.7, the new application will work, but your system won't boot the next time. And no, you can't use 2.4.5.2-mdk-1.6, you have to have 2.4.5.2-rh9-1.6" Sure, sometimes this can all be avoided by compiling from source, but that too is an advanced exercise, subject to dependencies, and can take a very long time on older hardware. All this isn't particular to open source operating systems either. It can be even worse on Windows, since you can't compile from source, and you must go off FTPing some obscure driver or patch to fix your installation. I certainly don't have an answer for this, do we statically link everything? Perhaps make some sort of adapter libraries so that new libraries can mimic older libraries and allow the older programs dependent on them to run? Apt, yum, dselect and others go a long way to make this a less painful experience, but they are a veil over the true problem. At times, it cannot be avoided, and the hideous underlying monster shows through. Thanks goodness for the dedicated people who package things up for us (ATrpms, KnoppMyth, etc.) and save us most of the headaches of installing and upgrading our systems. Regards, JJ _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
