The rise of linux (was RE: [ILUG] Pre configured boxes)

[Mel]

On Thu, 25 Nov 1999, John P. Looney wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 25, 1999 at 11:04:41AM -0000, Jakma, Paul mentioned:
> > It's mind-boggling. A lot of people on this list are long-time linux users.
> > Think back to when you first installed it. You sat in front a very stripped
> > down unix-like box, maybe with a really clunky fvwm or twm GUI, if you were
> > lucky. Did you think it would get this far? Then after you'd used it for a
> > couple of months, weren't you sure?[4]
> 
>  Though, in many departments, installing slackware from floppy wasn't that
> much harder than installing extra stuff on RedHat today. Example. I'd just
> installed RedHat 6.1 for my brother. He said "What's the story with
> Staroffice?". I showed him the RedHat applications CD, that has a
> StarOffice RPM on it. I was thrilled at how I was showing him how easy it
> was to install it - just "rpm -i /mnt/cdrom/StarDivision/*.rpm"
> 
>  Then it said "insufficent disk space on /" - smeg. It's trying to install
> into /opt. This stupid idea on StarDivisions part makes life a lot harder.
> Sure, I know that I can make /usr/opt, make a link, install it, and then
> link /usr/opt/Soffice50/bin/soffice to /usr/bin/soffice - but a beginner
> sure wouldn't. Linux and it's apps have a hell of a way to go yet.
> 

I don't think insufficient disk space is an installation problem or a
sympton of bad application support. Windows tries to install everything on
c:\program files. When out of disk space on C, it doesn't take a big leap
to install it on D. In a similar trend, it doesn't take a lot to add
--prefix or --root to install a package with rpm. I would guess gnorpm or
one of those front ends would have a --prefix option box.

Also, in my experience with new users, they make one partition for / and
leave it at that. There is no clever dividing partitions into /usr or
/usr/local. Therefore, they wouldn't have the same problem you did and rpm
would do the job with no errors. You divide up your partitions because you
know the advantages of it but it's not typical behaviour for a new user.

		Mel