On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 03:16:44PM +1100, Rod Butcher wrote: > I've thought about the "rpm hell" bit before. I notice that some > commercial apps (like Opera) seem to bundle everything required into a > single tarball and say "just install this". Do they achieve this by > statically linking in all the required libraries,
Yep. That's what they do. > and is this what is done in Windows ? My recollection of most Windows installation procedures is that they ship with all the dlls necessary for that application to run. You can see evidence of this if you use the windows packaging system; it will tell you about orphaned libraries and so forth. > I feel that it IS asking too much of non-technical users to "install x > and y before installing z", especially when installation of x.0.2 > gives the message "conflicts with x.0.1" or requires installation of v > and w. We techos tend to forgot the little glitches that occur which > spell badhair day to a non-technical user. There IS QA in the Free / > Opensource world. But I would agree that the Linux software install > process, logical as it may seem to a computer professional, is not up > to the needs of the non-technical user. I personally see all of these things as solved problems. I can't remember the last time it's been more than a few mouse clicks to install a piece of software I wanted. That said, one of the questions I dread from new Linux users is "how do I install X?". I don't dread it because it's a difficult question to answer, but because there's not one answer. The fact that a third party (your distributor) has taken on the responsibility of ensuring that this new software works for you is both a strength and a weakness of Linux. The fact that there is competition in the area of software integration means that the current generation of Linux distributions work really nicely with all the software you're likely to install on them. The downside is that the answer to questions like "I downloaded this file and I double click on it and I just ended up with more files, help!?" always ends up being a dialog rather than "double click it and cross your fingers". People expect software provinders to be installation providers, which I suppose is not unreasonable, it's just unfortunate. I think that is the problem that needs to be addressed. James. -- "Now, there are no problems only opportunities. However, this seemed to be an insurmountable opportunity." - http://www.surfare.net/~toolman/temp/diagram.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
