Re: New to FC
- From: ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Moe Trin)
- Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2006 19:41:49 -0600
On Thu, 07 Dec 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.redhat, in article
<8VKdh.8272$7T5.1903@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Solution Builder wrote:
"Moe Trin" <ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
As you appear to be new to this, you really should be sticking with
packages supplied by your distributor - in this case Red Hat. In
virtually all cases, these will be 'rpms' for use by your package manager.
I this case I was just trying to upgrade my Firefox to the latest
version, so that I could then put a tool on it for download management,
Downthemall.
Lessee, you said FC4...
[compton ~]$ zgrep -i firefox rpms.fc4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 19192555 May 25 19:54 firefox-1.0.4-4.i386.rpm
[compton ~]$ grep -i firefox fc4-legacy.11.27.06
[ ] firefox-1.0.8-1.1.fc4.i386.rpm 18-Apr-2006 10:52 18M
[compton ~]$
OK, FC4 came out of the box with firefox-1.0.4-4, and was updated to
firefox-1.0.8-1.1.fc4 in April. For comparison, the "current" Fedora Core 6
[compton ~]$ zgrep -i firefox rpms.fc6-i386.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 18505499 Oct 12 15:44
firefox-1.5.0.7-7.fc6.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 3208465 Oct 12 15:45
firefox-devel-1.5.0.7-7.fc6.i386.rpm
[compton ~]$ grep -i firefox fc6-updates.11.27.06
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 18524744 Oct 31 19:28
firefox-1.5.0.7-8.fc6.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 18532597 Nov 8 12:17
firefox-1.5.0.8-1.fc6.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 3207131 Oct 31 19:29
firefox-devel-1.5.0.7-8.fc6.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 mirror mirror 3211975 Nov 8 12:18
firefox-devel-1.5.0.8-1.fc6.i386.rpm
[compton ~]$
Well, there's the first problem with dealing with an older distribution.
FC4 is not quite 17 months old, but the support is backported from newer
releases, and takes time to appear. (Geez these things are getting bloated.)
I don't believe the FC6 update will install on your system (probably a lot
of dependencies). If the 1.0.8-1.1 errata doesn't do what you need, you
could try building the FC6 update source rpm.
The reason I'm hesitant is that while installing packages is relatively
simple, building them (which includes compiling them and creating the
extra files the package manager needs) is not newbie-turf. On the other
hand, it's recommended that you never install tarballs (outside of your
package manager) without good reason. First, there may be cross-
dependencies, and second, you have to take over the maintenance - you
become responsible for security fixes, etc.
Ah, yet another new term "package manager". My vocab is growing by
the line!! Ya I am a very new to Fedora person (a couple of decades on
WinTel and IBM midrange boxes, but new to Linux). So I am just now catching
up with what you all have been doing for 30 years or so. PBPWM!!
Linux hasn't been around for all that time - the 0.01 kernel was dated 17
August 1991. Distributions didn't appear for about a year after that, and
Red Hat only goes back to the summer of 1994. 'rpm' is their second package
manager (RH [01].x used rpp) and goes back to October 1995. The Debian
package manager (the other "main" package manager) was introduced in March
1995. One suggestion - Linux comes with an awesome amount of documentation
in the form of guides and HOWTOs. The RPM-HOWTO gives an oversight of that
manager.
Package managers are a joy. They take the horror of keeping several
hundred applications more or less in line away from the user and/or
local admin, and place if firmly with someone like the distributor.
Updating something using rpm can be as simple as 'rpm -F /path/to/pacake'
compared to './configure', 'make' (and a lot of reading/review) and a
final 'make install'. The other advantage is that they get a handle
on the dependencies - needed libraries and perhaps other applications,
version numbers and the like.
One thing that confuses people is that the distributions often backport
fixes and features from newer releases into their packages. This screws
up the compatibility - you rarely can take a package meant for Mandriva
or SuSE and install it in Red Hat/Fedora. Additionally, the dependencies
often prevent using packages for newer (or older) releases within the
same distribution. By this, I mean a package for FC2 or FC6 probably is
going to be difficult to install on FC4. Ah, the wonders of advancing
software development.
Old guy
.
- References:
- New to FC
- From: Solution Builder
- Re: New to FC
- From: Moe Trin
- Re: New to FC
- From: Solution Builder
- New to FC
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