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

[David Jamison]

Darragh Bailey wrote:

>On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, Justin wrote:
>
>  
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>>John P. Looney wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>> I recommend jpackage.org for this - it has loads of Java packages. But
>>>getting Tomcat working is still a nightmare, even with all their
>>>assistance.
>>>
>>>john
>>>      
>>>
>>Installing Tomcat via YAst on Suse 9.2 is simplicity itself.
>>
>>Justin
>>    
>>
>
>
>portage system for gentoo is very impressive in this regards, in that
>gentoo have created a packaging system that is able to deal with parts of
>software that needs to be downloaded manually. Such as sun's jdk, once
>downloaded though the portage system is capable of managing the install.
>
>Of course, portage is not without its short comings with regards to
>compiling everything should you choose to do so.
>
>--
>Darragh
>
>"Nothing's foolproof to a sufficently talented fool"
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>
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I still would wonder why software is so hard to install or perhaps more 
accurately initally configure.  I do think there is a lot in what 
someone said that the developers concentrate on making "good" software 
but I would have thought that part of the development cycle is 
useability and if it takes for ever to set up the software is hardly 
immediately useable!!  To contrast with Windows software virtually all 
has an install and indeed an uninstall routine.  My own personal issue 
with this is that say for example I had four or five different packages 
to evaluate to do a particular task I would quickly lose interest if 
each package took even 3 hours to install and get runnning.  Yes by all 
means write good code but at least give some thought to the end user who 
is trying to operate the software!

Just a small point the java installation was fine it was the editors etc 
that caused me the grief. 

D