[TAG] (admin) Status

[Jimmy O'Regan]

Mike Orr wrote:
> Articles 'pai' and 'seymour' in SVN need review/proofreading/HTML check.
> Pai is in India English and may need links added for its text files.
> Seymour has escaped HTML tags that need to be unescaped, and it also
> has a lot of supplemental files and images whose links should all be
> checked.
> 
> I haven't made any headway on my article; I'll have to do that Saturday.
> So it looks like we'll be publishing Saturday or Sunday.
> 
> Jimmy, 'brown' is still listed as open.  Have you finished proofing it?
> 
Yeah, finished; forgot to update the STATUS file.

If it doesn't cause Heather and Thomas too much pain, suffering, and 
tearing out of hair, I have some comments to make about a few quotes:

"Now, Windows users are a picky bunch. We expect to double-click on an 
icon, usually "setup.exe", and everything works automagically."

Actually, Microsoft is now using MSI (Microsoft Installer) files, which 
are closer to Linux packages than to setup programs, in that the package 
does not include an executable frontend; the main difference is that 
with both MSI and Setup.exe type installers each dependancy is included 
in the package. (Another difference is that Linux package formats are 
documented, and most package formats (not RPM) can be manipulated using 
standard tools. That said, the Wine project has REd the MSI format).

The advantages of this approach are that you can install from the 
command-line; this may not seem like a big deal to the average home 
user, but when you're administering a machine in some other part of the 
world, it's invaluable.

"The logic of what to uninstall, what to install, and what questions 
need to be asked of the person doing the installation, are all built 
into the process. With KDE, there's no such thing. Apparently, nobody 
feels it's needed, despite the multitude of different packages which 
must be installed (and uninstalled) in a particular order."

Though Tom may not appreciate this, the third sentence contradicts the 
first; he wouldn't know that certain packages need to be installed in a 
particular order if that information wasn't there.

"But some sort of automation is desperately needed here."

This automation is available; Thomas told him about it. It's available 
in just about every distribution under the sun. Debian, IMO, does the 
best job of any distribution I've seen when it comes to this; apt (which 
determines and resolves dependancies) and debconf (which configures the 
software) are wonderful tools.

Other than that, apt is available for RPM based distributions, Mandrake 
has rpmdrake, Fedora Core has yum, Ximian have Red Carpet (though that 
only really installs GNOME right now, but it should be better integrated 
into SuSE RSN, now that both companies are owned by Novell), as Thomas 
noted, SuSE has YOU, and according to what I've read, Gentoo's Portage 
system does this too.

Here's a tip, even if it does mean using "all that command-line 
nonsense". If you want to install multiple packages which depend on each 
other, specify all of them in the same command.

rpm -i package1 package2 package3 ... packagen

rpm will figure out which order to install them in to resolve 
dependancies. You might even be able to do this in Konqueror, by 
selecting multiple rpms and launching them.

"Now it's only fair to tell you that a lot of folks recommend a 
different procedure for installing KDE. First, boot to the Linux command 
line instead of the GUI"

No, it should never be necessary to reboot to upgrade anything. Sure, if 
you've upgraded the kernel, it's necessary to reboot to *use* it, but 
installing software should not require a reboot. (That is, unless you're 
changing distributions).