Re: PROBLEM SOLVED: Mandrake 7.2

[David Raleigh Arnold]

=======================HWN:
I am dead certain that making the bibliography is not required for
compilation, 
--------------------------yhs 
Since I couldn't get the documentation installed, I wasn't willing to
use it.
=========================
*and* that making it does not require Java in any form.  
--------------------
That little bibliography utility, which is about 200k if I remember
right, requires the jdk, which is over 10 megs. All I know is what *its*
documentation, in the tarball, presented to me as requirements. Of
course the rpm dependencies would break too many of the programs in the
distro, requiring a different gcc++ library, so that was out of the
question. Not my fault. :-)

I don't want to fail to make the point that if you want to run lilypond,
you don't want Mandrake 7.2. It's a lot easier to install some other
distribution. I'm not using mdk7.2 anymore. It seriously lacks
development tools. They claim to be 99% compatible with RedHat, and I'm
asserting that lilypond is in the 01% that is not even close.

RedHat 7.0 froze. I think it couldn't handle my old isa scsi card.
*Mandrake could.* Maybe it was something else, but I was not ready to be
patient with that nonsense. So I've gone to debian, which I eventually
will have on all my (2) machines and maybe (1) router. Software that
works is ultimately more user friendly than software that doesn't, no
matter the interface.

Ten years from now, debian will still be around. RedHat might not be.
It's very simple. RedHat can go out of business, debian can't. There's
also Tony Fok, whose help to the project was not a minor consideration
in the decision. He's a VVIP to me now. :-)
-- 
daveA (debian.user)