Late at night, by candle light, Jan Panteltje
<
[email protected]> penned this immortal opus:
Linux itself screwed up, OO is fine. It kind of insisted on some
critical updates so I let it run. After that neither the updater nor
the system configurator worked. Running them from console gave some
hints, after asking around I found the update breaks python regularly.
So find the relevant python distro, set it up and install. A couple of
hours watching gobble-de-gook running across the screen while it
fetches whatever else seems to be missing. No joy, won't run until the
packagedb is fully updated and portage broke too. So run pkgdb.update
or some such. Chomps around on the HD for a couple of hours then gives
up with an error report stating clearly it's a bug. Won't tell which
nor can I find any report on it. This is where I go and do something
that might have a chance of succeeding.
OO and solitaire work fine but the wife gripes that xfreecell doesn't
look and feel like MS freecell. Most everything else appears to be OK
but I'm not even thinking of trying to update any of it.
I've set up a few FreeBSD servers in my time, so I'm not unfamiliar
with CLI. FBSD has the added advantage that the documentation is
clear, consistent and up to date. Last time I looked Xwindows on FBSD
sucked big time.
Yes, well..... I admit that things like 'pkgdb.update' or whatever
it is called in a distro, have their bugs...
I can only make a few suggestions.
I have on PC with several Linuxes (Grub boot loader selects at power up),
and much of my _data_ is on different harddisks.
I like to work with source, so I have to compile the same stuff for all
these older and newer systems.... sometimes I just grab stuff from
an other system.
What can I say?
Get one distro, the simplest one, compile a kernel and its modules (the
ones you need).
Now after that brain stretching (kernel config) stretch some more
by making a new Grub.....
You know all that if you came from BSD I suppose.
For a person who only wants open office to work.. get a complete distro
that has it, with printer drivers etc..., have them run as non-root,
and if a new Debian, or whatever you use, comes out, buy a new harddisk, and
install the new stuff, test it, mount the old harddisk as hdb or something,
ln -s (softlink) it to something in the current distro, and continue.
Even that will be too difficult for some people, but I do not think
updating MS applications is easier, but maybe it is as I never do that.
Usually it does not even install right the first time (MS drivers etc).
But in my view it is _faster_ to grab a good Unix book, and a Linux PC,
and just learn the basics.
I clearly remember (I used Unix at work in 1979 or so) the day I decided
(MSDOS days, and we were discussing other OSes too) to buy that Unix book.
It went on the bookshelf, but when I had the SLS Linux command line, I
grabbed it, and went over it again command by command.
'What do I type?'
And there were so many different commands, that I had many pages of notes,
how to format a floppy, how to mount, how to make a swap partition, how to -anything-.
It took years and still I sometimes know a command exists, but no idea what it is called.
And I find new ones everyday too.
In the old days you could hit tab twice to get the number of commands, but now I did it this way:
ls /usr/bin/ > q
ls /usr/local/bin/ >> q
ls /usr/X11R6/bin >> q
ls /usr/local/sbin/ >> q
joe q
I count 5346 lines.
5346 commands.
And there are more, some are not in those dirs, but maybe for example in a compile directory,
linked to an icon.
Each command has a manual..... some like 'firefox' can do a lot.
Each command has command line options.
You cannot expect somebody to know 5300 commands just like that (or ever).
Therefore Linux is not for dummies.
Oh well
But you do not have to know them all, but any Unix user should know some basic ones.
I do not normally use .deb or .rpm to 'upgrade' and kernels I get from
www.kernel.org and install myself....
No problems.
Just look for the source (yes open office is big, so is mozilla, in that case grab a binary for
your system), because usually you also need the related headers.....
Those .deb and .rpm systems break as soon as their database is not updated after you installed
something alien from source.
Leave the OS itself as is, unless you want to config a kernel.
Actually this subject is too big to write a guide on Usenet.....