Re: A newbie question? Observation? Confusedment?
From: Arch Stanton (nowhere_at_nowhere.net)
Date: 05/25/04
- Next message: Mike Ballard: "OK - so it's another book question..."
- Previous message: Michael Heiming: "Re: scripting question"
- In reply to: Arch Stanton: "A newbie question? Observation? Confusedment?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 20:32:16 -0500
On Sat, 22 May 2004 13:58:59 -0500, Arch Stanton wrote:
> I am in the early stages of learning Linux, that is, confused but having
> fun. I came from that other OS, I forget its name, but with it you could
> have a program that was delivered as a single exe file that ran without
> any other requirements other than stuff delivered with the os.
>
>
>
Ok, I know that if you deliver a single Windows exe that it is not a DOS
type stand alone program - much other stuff has to be running on Win for
it to work - but that other stuff is always there.
I guess the problem that I am trying to unconfusticate is that if I build
a killer Linux program that the entire world has to have (fat chance) I
don't see how you can guarantee that it will run on any given Linux unless
I deliver ALL the required stuff to make it work.
This is obviously a real problem, since I constantly download stuff that
may load and run just fine on Debian, but not Red Hat, or Red Hat and not
Suse. Even a commercial program like Kylix gives totally different errors
on any given Distro. It can always be made to work, but always takes
major/minor hacking and googling before it does. Now, in my case this
just adds to the learning input and I like doing that kind of stuff
anyway. But the average person won't and can't setup symlinks and lib
paths and the like to make something work.
My point about FireFox was that it always runs on any Distro that I try it
on and I assume that the reason is that any non absolutely vanilla stuff
that it needs, they included in the package. Obviously it is very sloppy
to add the 87th copy of a library to a system, but in this day of 80 gig
drives being yanked because they are too small, space is not a problem.
I don't see a fix for having to hack installs until all Linux distros use
the identical set of system libs and stuff which is not going to happen
and I am not sure that I would want it to happen. Freedom of choice is
good.
As far as the mention of Apt-Get, I love it, especially after the RPM hell
that I thought was normal. However, it is not perfect - I recently did an
apt-get remove of some trivial program and watched as it proceeded to
delete about a third of my /usr subdir. Still, it beats the hell out of
./configure/make/make test/make install which ALWAYS required that one
last library that can't be found.
Still having lots of fun, though.
Archie
- Next message: Mike Ballard: "OK - so it's another book question..."
- Previous message: Michael Heiming: "Re: scripting question"
- In reply to: Arch Stanton: "A newbie question? Observation? Confusedment?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Relevant Pages
|
