New software

[BrainLifter]

I'm decently new to linux... I have SuSE 7.1 (I think I'm either going to upgrade to 8 or switch to red hat) however, everytime I get into useing it, I decide I want to use a program like 8itchX however it's not installed yet. I have looked everywhere for this information on-line help files from SuSE, internet help from places like linux.com, and some web boards. I have found some but it really didn't help me very much.

If anybody could help me out there with maybe a little more easy to understand tutorials on unzipping and installing new software. I would be greatly appreciative.

 

[PolyPill]

Well the easiest way to install programs ate with the packaging system that your distribution uses. Redhat and Mandrake use RPMs, not sure is SUSE uses them or their own. If you have those you just type as root "rpm -ivh yourprogram.rpm" Then it will usually say "I need you to find and install this crap before you can play pong" then you've gotta install a million things that you have no clue why you'd need them to play pong, some of those things will ask for yet more things and some will ask you to remove others before they will install. That's woste case, *most* of the time things get installed without needing extra stuff.

If you download the source it's usually a lot more complex, you need to untar it and read the readme, then read the install, most have an autoconfig but some don't. You also need the development packages and libraries to compile. Mixing source and packages gets pretty ugly, especially since rpms don't like to recognize source libs.

Which is all why I use Debian, one simple command "apt-get install bitchx" and you're done, but then some people would rather spend an hour installing.

 

[Cooler666]

Well the easiest way to install programs ate with the packaging system that your distribution uses. Redhat and Mandrake use RPMs, not sure is SUSE uses them or their own. If you have those you just type as root "rpm -ivh yourprogram.rpm" Then it will usually say "I need you to find and install this crap before you can play pong" then you've gotta install a million things that you have no clue why you'd need them to play pong, some of those things will ask for yet more things and some will ask you to remove others before they will install. That's woste case, *most* of the time things get installed without needing extra stuff.

If you download the source it's usually a lot more complex, you need to untar it and read the readme, then read the install, most have an autoconfig but some don't. You also need the development packages and libraries to compile. Mixing source and packages gets pretty ugly, especially since rpms don't like to recognize source libs.

and that's the reason Linux can't compete against Windows
I've also had problems installing simple things like Opera and my graphics card.

 

[XWRed1]

Yea, pushing rpm on people who expect Linux to work like Windows seems to be a bad idea. Probably work out alot better to base a consumer distro around Debian, then build some killer whiz-bang apt-get management program, because that would probably blow most of those people away.

How do you propose to rectify the "problem", Cooler666?

 

[Jeff Bolton]

if they can make a debian-based distro that is just a LITTLE teenie bit easier to set up, i'm sure it can compete with redhat and mandrake in terms of easy-setupability. i'm sure that after set up, there isn't a whole lot different. plus, if debian was to go mainstream, i'm sure a newbiefied version could come out in addition to the base that hardcore fans could get.

jeff

 

[Samurai_Punch]

They aren't putting out ISO's of Debian are they? I tried getting an iso to compile last year with one of the releases, and it never would compile correctly...

 

[XWRed1]

I never had to compile an iso... I just burned one, installed from it, then apt-got my way to the latest release.

 

[Samurai_Punch]

What i had tried before was downloading all the packages and then compile those to an iso... did you use the netboot cd iso?

 

[XWRed1]

I dunno, I used the Debian iso. It installs a fixed set of packages from the cd, then you take it up to whatever you want. All the distros make the files available to "compile your own cd", but thats not terribly practical. Easier to just grab their iso.