Re: installation problem with f2c

[Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso]

On 5/8/06, Ares <address@hidden> wrote:
>  I'm new to Octave (actually I'm new to Linux and programming in general).

Welcome!

>  by the way I don't see why they don't
> distribute f2c in the Octave installation package,

And welcome to the world of dependencies, one of the main reasons why
installing software in GNU/Linux can be difficult. By its very nature,
since many people have to work on it in a decentralised fashion, free
software becomes extremely modular and bite-size, and it is up to the
users to go out and hunt for all of necessary modules. GNU/Linux
distributions usually do the module hunting for oneself, except in the
cases when for whatever reason a particular distribution didn't think
that a piece of software was popular enough to maintain it in their
distro along with all of its dependencies.

Not that I want to start a distro war here, and forgive my
opinionatedness, but apt-based distributions like Debian, Knoppix, or
Ubuntu have effectively solved virtually all of my dependency
problems. I hear that rpm-based distros like Fedora Core, Suse, or
Mandriva are getting better at this sort of thing too. I'm sorry to
hear that you're having problems with it.

But do not despair! Free software takes a while to get used to it
(Gauss knows that it took me a while to get used to it, and I
complained every step of the way), but once you're proficient with it,
you'll never go back. Ask away! Community, not corporation, is one of
the best parts about free software.

Cheers,
- Jordi G. H.