[clug] Failed OS updates - and a request

[Felix Karpfen]

Martin Pool wrote:
> On 21 Apr 2003, Felix Karpfen <felixk at webone.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > Both these distributions appear to be following the path successfully
> > pioneered by Microsoft - a path that says to the user: "You do not know
> > what you want; _we do_".
> 
> If you feel strongly about this, you might like to try Linux From
> Scratch:
> 
>   http://www.au.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/intro.shtml
> 
> I'm sure it would be an enormously educational experience.

It would, if I had space for a second computer on which to do the
learning.  Learning that is clearly needed since I managed to burn my
fingers badly with both the latest Mandrake and the latest RedHat.  Only
my backups on CD-RWs saved my bacon.

I currently have a fully-operational setup that fits my needs like a
glove. I believe that my only likely needs are updates to the kernel,
XFree and probably some libraries - and all these updates are (I also
believe to be) landmines for the uneducated.

Based on my very cursory inspections of the (botched) RedHat update, it
looked as though there had been a lot of effort put into KDE - which I
install, but use only for running KNotes.  There may also have been
significant developments in Gnome - which I do not use at all and had
not bothered to install.

But my suspicions were aroused (and this may be a misunderstanding) by
the RedHat notification that it had renamed all the font files. While
RedHat 9.0 still recognises both the standard descriptions - e.g.:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-14-130-75-75-c-70-iso8859-15

and the new simplified RedHat identifications, future updates will only
recognise the latter. 

Which is OK for RedHat packages.  But what about all the packages that I
have installed from source codes?   And the fact the RedHat now only
supports KDE and Gnome (desktops) and no other windows-manager did
little to endear RedHat 9.0 to me.

As flagged in my previous posting, I am not willing to "suck
it-and-see". If the need to update becomes mandatory, Debian and apt-get
may be the answer.  However, since Debian stable still uses a kernel
older than the one that I have currently installed, there does not seem
to be a great urgency.

Felix Karpfen 

-- 
Felix Karpfen
felixk at webone.com.au
Public Key 72FDF9DF (DH/DSA)