Re: help with installation

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Laura Conrad <address@hidden> writes:

> So what's the dpkg/apt for "Tell me what package this file that seems
> to be missing is in?"  The solution I found was the package search on
> the debian site.

Most convenient is grep Contents-<arch>.gz; however, if apt fails to
install a dependency, a visit to bugs.debian.org is much appreciated.

> I really think they aren't getting as much testing as the
> redhat/Mandrake stuff gets.

I think that's what I said: no much testing if any at all; except for
a stable release.  You may expect a flawless upgrade from one stable
to the next.

> But the so-called experimental stuff is quite old compared the the
> Mandrake so-called stable stuff.  Which is a problem for me, since
> some of what I do wants to have fairly up-to-date kernels.

Huh?  Debian unstable is rather bleeding edge, in most cases.  It has
kernel-image-2.4.18, lilypond-1.4.10, pktrace-0.6.10.

> Most of what I find with Debian packages also has RPMs.

Yes, you're probably right; otherwise noone would stick to Red Hat
(would they)?  Anyway, I was having very hard times finding suitable
[S]RPMs for powerpc; that made me try Debian again.

> I was thinking of switching partly for the political reasons,

Oh, yes; that too.  But the horrors of dselect kept me away for
years.

> But Debian really seems hard to work with.  And if Debian can't keep
> X working, do they really do better with tetex and ghostscript?

Well, they're the only one to have lilypond integrated with tetex,
instead of having to rely on the ugly /etc/profile.d kludge.

But what you say is one of the biggest problems of Debian, imo: the
quality of a package is mostly dependent on the maintainer; which
means that package quality may vary a lot.

Jan.

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org