[ILUG] Installing software on Linux (Specifically Fedora core 3)

[David Jamison]

Im getting so frustrated here!

Im trying to do two things at once at the moment firstly Im undertaking 
the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform and combining with 
that using Linux to do it on.

I was completely successful in downloading and installing on to the 
Linux box j2sdk its up and running fine so no issues there.

I want to use VIM as the text editor (no particular reason apart from Vi 
then VIM where the editors I started with) was reading about Kvim and 
decided to give it a run to evaluate (This partly because the version of 
VIM included with Fedora seems a bit limited). So I go to 
http://www.freehackers.org/kvim/ and take a download of the RPM.  They 
do talk about Yzis but lets not go there yet!  This gives a dependency 
of /usr/bin/nawk and libGLcore.so.1 and neither seems to be available 
for download. So a couple of  hours wasted there!

I was working away with the Java and came across JEdit Thinking this was 
worth a look at downloaded it extracted it and there was an install 
script so went with it but it is looking for switches but there is no 
indication of which does what.  going through the extract I noticed 
documentation such as installation.txt and general.html going into 
/usr/share/jedit-4.2/doc but when I go to find the said 
/usr/share/jedit4-2 to is not there!!!!  More time wasted!

I really think software installation is the biggest issue that is 
holding Linux back.   I do appreciate that packages have to be such they 
are available (for example) in a format accessible by all the distros 
and switches are for configuration and so on but as in the case the 
software was only going on for a "look see" as both packages may or may 
not be fit for the purpose I have in mind it most certainly did not 
justify the time and effort put into it.  On the other hand either or 
both might have been exactly what was required and therefore I lose out!

So;

1. Does anyone know how I could quickly get either Kvim or JEdit up and 
running
2. Is there anything actually better (easier) than KVim or JEdit.  The 
former for editing Java Files and the Latter as a graphical environment 
for Java development
3.  Is there anything Im specifically missing in terms of installation 
of software in Linux?

TIA

David