Re: [Pan-users] Click on URL in a post??

[Duncan]

On Wed 11 Dec 2002 14:41, Beartooth posted as excerpted below:
> On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:
> > GTK is the 'toolkit' or 'widget set' that Gnome is built with.
> > Gnome is the environment, GTK is the building-block
>
>       And Gnome hasn't gotten to gtk2 yet? So if I download and
> install gtk2 it will replace gtk1 and break things? Or is there
> backward compatibility that a subtechnoid can count on? I'll get it
> if I dare -- I feel like more of a fossil than usual, running 0.11

<g> on that fossil ref...  Gnome 2 is indeed out.  Running them side-by-side 
is supposed to be possible, but most distribs package it as a replacement, 
rather than for side-by-side use, AFAIK.  The easiest thing to do for a less 
technically oriented person would be to simply install the newest version of 
the distrib, as you were thinking of doing on a different hard drive.

> > this is another reason I like Debian. there's no big upgrade
> > steps; it's just a smooth curve (if you follow testing or
> > unstable). bugs may appear, but they get hammered out pretty
> > fast.

That sounds like Mandrake, using urpmi, if you point it to a Cooker mirror.
The biggest difficulty I had was when I first tried it, and had the huge 
initial upgrade, since what I had locally was rather behind by then.  Besides 
a few dependency issues that I had to resolve manually, like with the 
GTK/Gnome 1 vs. 2 stuff, and the same with KDE 2.2 vs. 3.0, there was a devfs 
update, that used a different and separately packaged module which wasn't in 
the dependencies because it was more like an added feature -- only one that 
something else DID depend on.  I rebooted and devfs didn't load, which meant 
that its handling of legacy /dev references didn't load either, including 
/dev/hda etc. references.  I had to work with a bare rootfs loaded, no /usr 
or /home, no swap, etc.  Since the dependencies for VIM and MC were on /usr, 
I couldn't run them, either.  I had to get out my trusty "rearing horse" and 
"the Arabian" (O'Reilly's "Running Linux" and "Linux in a Nutshell"), and 
learn enough SED on the fly to use it as an editor, first to display fstab, 
then to modify it to use the long /dev/ide strings rather than /dev/hda type 
strings.  Once I did that, I could mount my other partitions, and get on the 
net using lynx to figure out what was wrong with devfs, remove the conf file 
dependency on the other module, check that it worked then, then download the 
module and install it, and reenable the conf file dependency.

I was pretty proud of the fact that I was able to do all that without 
resorting to my old W98 install to get on the net and read about it or ask 
questions in the newsgroups, as I did, with the first few problems I'd had on 
initial install.  (Those problems were LILO booting a triple-drive system 
with BIOS drive order switching, and figuring out how to get X running on all 
three of my monitors, as the Mdk GUI front-end to reconfiguring XF86Config 
couldn't quite stretch it's feeble brain around the concept of my actually 
wanting to run THREE monitors on TWO video cards.  Obviously not your typical 
user type problems, since "typical users" don't HAVE three monitor displays, 
and if they have three hard drives, they are willing to let them stay in 
whatever order they happen to come up.)

>       In my youth I helped an uncle clear brush from a farm that
> hadn't been worked in twenty years. You just keep cutting what hits
> you in the face next, and eventually things get to where you can
> build brush piles -- even if it feels at times like you'll never
> get out again. Sometimes all this stuff feels that way, too.

That's a rather accurate analogy, I think.  <g>  I had some experience with 
similar brush clearing type tasks, as a kid, although not /quite/ as 
dramatic.

>       There we differ -- maybe because I don't (yet?) see the
> commands as sentences. I spent a couple years trying to teach
> myself linux out of manuals -- with RH 6 on the second hard drive
> -- and getting nowhere. It was only when I broke down and started
> using the GUI that I got far enough to be able to *do* anything
> while I'm learning. Visual memory supplies a crutch that helps me.

I'd seriously recommend the books I mentioned above, O'Reilly's Running Linux, 
and Linux in a Nutshell.  Together, they set me back about $70 US, but I'd 
not been getting anywhere in my Linux meanderings before that, as I was 
simply /lost/.  They saved me at LEAST three months of HARD learning, and 
allowed me with some effort to enter Linux at the intermediate user / 
beginning sysadmin level.  I've mentioned above two of the three initial 
problems I faced, and another one I faced later, all pretty much ONLY fixable 
at the low-level, in the text interface, or at least by direct editing of the 
text config files, rather than pushing buttons in a GUI config.  None of that 
would have been possible at that early stage, had I not read those books.  I 
consider them some of the best investments I've ever made in my decade plus 
of computer experience (a decade on MSWormOS, just over a year on Linux).

-- 
Duncan
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin