[lotuseclat79]

Debian Help article Debian/Linux - in general.

A very good rationale for choosing to use Debian and/or its derivatives.

-- Tom

[tomdkat]

I disagree with the irrelevant part but other than that, it's a good read. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the "package" systems that have evolved since I've spent most of my Linux learning curve building stuff from source. This means, I'm perfectly fine doing that AND I do that some with my current Ubuntu system. I've built Apache, MySQL, PHP, Gimp, Pidgin, and a 64-bit Linux native Win32-targetted Mingw32 cross compiler toolchain all from source on my Ubuntu system.

I started out using Slackware and would install the bare bones system and build everything from source. I would install the base system, development tools, and networking support and that's it. Then, I would download the latest version of XFree86, kernel, glibc, developer tools (binutils, gcc, etc) and build all that myself. Once I got X up, I would install whatever window managers I wanted and bootstrap the rest of the system from there.

The only stuff I haven't been able to build from source are OpenOffice and Mozilla browsers. Other apps like that I just haven't tried to build from source.

Peace...

[lotuseclat79]

Hi tomdkat,

Yeah, I've done all of that too, however, when the system gets upgraded and main components are modified to not include some of your favorites, do you really want to build everything up from scratch again? I don't!

Actually, I understand your preference very well, but you seriously need to give the package managers a chance to see what you get. You can always choose to revert your preferences - but, building from scratch if it has already been done is a waste of time and can be accomplished quickly by the package management system.

My gripe is with developers that do not upgrade their applications by porting them to newer versions of interfaces like KDE 3.5.10 to 4.2.2, or even just not porting the KDE application to Gnome (much harder to do, and most likely will never be done). Then I am forced to recompile their latest versions of the applications with older interfaces on newer instances of OS in newer KDE environments. At least I can then get the latest version of the application up and running rather than be stuck with an older version with less capability.

Peace...

-- Tom

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

Yeah, I've done all of that too, however, when the system gets upgraded and main components are modified to not include some of your favorites, do you really want to build everything up from scratch again? I don't!

Back in my Slackware days, I kept my system up to date myself. As a result, I had a much more current system than any "mainstream" distro, at that time. Back then RedHat 6 was the kind of distro. I used Slackware 8 as my base. Back then Slackware really didn't have "packages" as we know them today so I didn't wait for a new Slackware release to upgrade my system.

If a new version of XFree86 came out, I downloaded the source and built it. The same with compiler, window manager, and some application updates. So, I never was confronted with the issue you describe.

Actually, I understand your preference very well, but you seriously need to give the package managers a chance to see what you get. You can always choose to revert your preferences - but, building from scratch if it has already been done is a waste of time and can be accomplished quickly by the package management system.

I've been doing this and I still am not really fond of the package management system. My BIGGEST gripe is the separation of development files from the main app files. I don't know how many times I've had to install the "devel" versions of who knows what in order to build something else from source. Ubuntu tends to be slow to update certain apps, so I've got no choice but to build those from source.

When I build those same apps or libraries from source, I get EVERYTHING so I'm not having to keep installing more and more "devel" packages as I do now.

My gripe is with developers that do not upgrade their applications by porting them to newer versions of interfaces like KDE 3.5.10 to 4.2.2, or even just not porting the KDE application to Gnome (much harder to do, and most likely will never be done). Then I am forced to recompile their latest versions of the applications with older interfaces on newer instances of OS in newer KDE environments.

I understand your gripe and I think this could possibly be mitigated by "cleaner" programming practices, provided KDEs API is sound and fairly static. If the KDE API is in flux, it will be too much work for the developer to keep pace. The Gimp developrs do a pretty good job of keeping pace with Glib/GTK+ updates but in this case, sometimes newer versions of Gimp will need newer versions of those libraries.

Peace...