[olug] question downloading packages

[Robert A. Jacobs]

On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 21:23, Francis Geiger wrote:
> I'm a newbie to Linux I am trying to use rpm to load gnomesword in my
> RedHat 8.0 system. This is my first foray in to rpm. I have a msg saying
> I need to load libsword.so.1  and I also found I need to load
> sword-1.5.3 as well.  Is this a normal situation when loading and
> installing packages with Linux? Do I download all these packages then
> install each of them in turn?  

As other responders have noted, this is a fairly common problem on Red
Hat (and other RPM-based distributions).  There are tools available to
help mitigate the problem...search around on both the Red Hat user
forums (if such a thing exists) and Mandrake User forums and you'll
probably find some help.

I'm a Debian user, myself.  Debian does not have this problem thanks to
a wonderful (and centralized) package management system.  It is one of
the things that makes using Debian a breeze.

One responder has suggested you try Debian or Gentoo, if you get tired
of RPM-hell.  I would agree -- with one warning:  Debian can be a bit
daunting to install and configure; presently, it requires a fair amount
of knowledge about your system (chipsets, etc.), does not feature a
graphical install and will probably have you mucking around in your
system files to get everything up and running.  Upside:  you'll learn a
LOT about your system, how to configure it, where various files are
located, etc.  Downside:  Few newbies are going to get it installed in
30 minutes (heck, few veterans get it installed that quickly if they've
got unfamiliar hardware).  

Thankfully, a Debian Desktop sub-project has been started and will
hopefully produce an installation experience similar to other
distributions.

If you'd like to try Debian, without a lot of problems doing an install,
you can always give Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org  -- be sure to click
on the "This page is now available in English" link if you are not too
familiar with German) a try (it is a CD-based distro that you stick in
your CD-ROM and run from there).  If you like what you see, there are
ways to create a runnning system from it
(http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/1104.barr.html).

Once you've got Debian running on your system, you can install
applications with a single command:

	apt-get install gnomesword

This one command will grab the gnomesword debian package and ALL of the
dependencies for you at one time.  Now, what I've described here is
somewhat simplistic but if you are interested, I'm sure there is help
here and on the debian-user mailing list (a VERY active list --
sometimes ~200 messages or more a day) to get you going.

robert.a.jacobs