[CLUE-Tech] Debian: gpm not installing by default

[jbrockmeier at earthlink.net]

On Sun, 21 Apr 2002, Collins wrote:

*snip*

> There's a lot of discussion on the user group about how best to fix
> the problem permanently.  Quite a few people are recommending tagging
> the fixes as stable (3 months behind current), current, and
> experimental.

The Debian system - though very slow - works pretty well. By the
time something hits stable it has been banged on HARD and it's
stable. 

Having stable/testing/unstable is a good start. The Debian maintainer
process is also pretty effective - though it's a bit off-putting
in its formality. It's also a bit single-minded. It's designed for
developers, by developers. If you just want to maintain, say, documentation,
it's not well-designed for that. 
 
> If you install a system from scratch, you won't encounter any of these
> problems, and your system will be rock solid.  The KDE 3.0 package,
> for example, was perfect if you hadn't tinkered with the Beta
> releases.

Hmmm. In that case, I'll have to give it a shot. I've installed the
precompiled binaries for Mandrake and Slackware - both are horrible.
(Note, I don't think the Slackware or Mandrake packages are "official")
 
> I've really only encountered two major problems in two years.  One was
> about 8-9 months ago when a major revision to the boot scripts
> occurred.  I did a reinstall to cure that.  About a month ago, a
> binary incompatible but source compatible update to libpng was
> released without any warning.  This broke and required recompile of
> most X-based stuff (kde, gnome, xfce, etc.).

Urgh. That would hurt. 
 
> Once again, you would never encounter this type of problem when
> installing from scratch.

So, compile everything and you'll be okay? Well, I've got a 
PII 350/128MB of RAM with nothing better to do...

I wonder if there's a way to use a more powerful machine to compile
packages and then move them to another? I've got a Dual Xeon III 
with 1GB of RAM running KRUD that would make short order of compiling 
everything...probably too complex to get it to work right, though.
 
> Except for the occasional update snafu, gentoo is the most rock solid
> distro that I've used.  You just need to stay a little behind the
> times with updates.  There are plenty of bleeding edge afficionados
> who will try it out and report what's broken.

Cool. 
 
> The other side of the coin is this.  Like every linux distro,
> installing on a laptop or on unusual new peripherals (RAID, etc.) can
> be problematic.  Also, gentoo requires you to download lots of source
> packages.  If you have only a 56K modem, this will be a trying time. 
> My cable router/modem works OK, but some people have had difficulty
> with getting some of the more unusual DSL setups to play nicely.
> 
> I'm onboard for the duration, but YMMV.

Thanks for the info. I will check it out.

Best,

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
ymessenger: jbrockmeier / AIM: ZonkerJoe
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