Linux Format forums

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

jjmac — Tue Jun 14, 2005 11:49 am

Author: jjmac

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2005 11:49 am

>>
I suppose it all depends on whether we are asking "is Linux ready for the desktop" for the already converted; or "is Linux ready for the desktop" for people who might be considering moving over from Windows. If the former, yes it definitely is. If the latter, well, no, I don't think so.
>>

I tend to think that part of Linuxs' problem is that it tries to be to windows like, in a focus via the two main window managers. People end up mistaking their manager for the platform.

Linux should really go its' own way completely. It should stick with the well tested security policy of having everything turned off by default ... but ... the ease comes with the readily available explaination of how to turn on whats needed/desired.

To often there are facilities that go unused only because a person hasn't got any information on how to enable them. That becomes totally a documentation issue.

And not just the "verbal" mindset that seem to dominate manual pages. Documentation must be both verbal and visual ... ie; diagrams and "examples" ...

Imagine how X could even become popular if it provided examples of all the differen XT options that exist ... but know one knows where (grin)

That goes for the installer stage as well ... clear, informative documented description, all nicely indexed.

>>
I'm just thrilled to bits when a standard configure, make, make install works for me, let alone trying to adapt anything !!
>>

Yes, i know ... a sense of humour is kinda handy at times ... is it not (grin)

jm

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Nigel — Sun Jun 12, 2005 12:21 am

Author: Nigel

Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 12:21 am

M0PHP wrote:

I could give my mum any linux distro with a GUI, and as long as her icons are appropriately named, she'd get on fine. But I know my brother would struggle. His desktop is full of icons for games that run on Windows.

Good point. Someone with a little knowledge of how things work in the Windows world (the office "expert") is going to struggle a lot more with Linux than someone who just does a bit of web browsing, emailing & word processing, and calls an "expert" in when things don't work.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

M0PHP — Sat Jun 11, 2005 10:50 pm

Author: M0PHP

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 10:50 pm

I could give my mum any linux distro with a GUI, and as long as her icons are appropriately named, she'd get on fine. But I know my brother would struggle. His desktop is full of icons for games that run on Windows.

I think it depends if Linux is up to the user's individual needs.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

nelz — Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:13 pm

Author: nelz

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:13 pm

It also depends on the environment. Home users may install new software or hardware but business users are rarely allowed to.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Marrea — Sat Jun 11, 2005 7:06 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 7:06 pm

And howdy to you, jjmac.

If there is an rpm available I'll usually pick that option because I know it's easier. I also realise that source is sometimes a better choice because of the optimisation aspect (which you mention). Unfortunately I don't feel I yet have sufficient know-how to try this. Personally, I'm just thrilled to bits when a standard configure, make, make install works for me, let alone trying to adapt anything !!

However each time I do an install from source, I learn a little more. And now, because of Album Shaper, I've learnt something about qmake.

But, going back to the "is Linux ready for the desktop" issue, I don't really think the vast majority of computer users (which essentially means Windows users!) are going to want to spend time discovering how to install programs from source. They are all too used to double-clicking on a nice little .exe file.

I suppose it all depends on whether we are asking "is Linux ready for the desktop" for the already converted; or "is Linux ready for the desktop" for people who might be considering moving over from Windows. If the former, yes it definitely is. If the latter, well, no, I don't think so.

I have to say, I quite enjoy these little exchanges of opinion with fellow forum members. All very stimulating.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Marrea — Sat Jun 11, 2005 6:36 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 6:36 pm

nelz wrote:

*sigh*

When will people realise the magazine goes with the disc and the disc goes with the magazine. The whole point of putting programs fro the magazine onto the disc is so that people don't have to go through what you have unnecessarily subjected yourself to.

Ah, yes, well .... struggles for excuse. The thing was, you see, that the blurb about Album Shaper on page 42 of LXF68 spoke about the application needing qmake to compile and I assumed (without checking) that the DVD only had a source version.

Anyway, now that I have the rpm program running nicely on SuSE and being a glutton for punishment, I am going to try and compile from source on my FC2 box. I need to become more proficient at this sort of thing.

Cheers, nelz
Marrea

Well, I've just finished compiling and installing Album Shaper from source on Fedora Core 2 - without a single hitch. Worked like a charm, as they say. Brilliant.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

jjmac — Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:30 am

Author: jjmac

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:30 am

>>
jjmac - agreed, I'm not comparing like with like. Unfortunately so often there aren't rpms available.
>>

Marrea ... Howdy , it was just the use of the term "by comparision ..." (grin). But ... unavailable binaries ... well, thats also true for any particular system really. Qt stuff sure does seem to be tight on its' dependency ranges it seems ... all solved once all the correct development packages are familiarised. I remember having to install around 600 - 700 Mbs' of stuff once just to compile a single gnome app once. Some html wizywig ide type of thing, can't remember its name. Took me a month to get that all together, and about 30mins to decide i didn't like it once i had it compiled (nearly feel over then) hehe.

Also ..., If something is very very new... i would usually expect some lag on package availability.... And, at least with the source compile you have the opportunity to apply some optimisation for your own system, which may be quite good, depending on the app.

On it installing in your "home" directory though ... that should be considered more of a feature than anything else. Basically the author/maintainer is trying to protect your system from clutter and the like by not installing in the standard system wide locations .. aka .. /usr. (Not an unusual practice). Unless specifically requested to do. Usually invoves passing a "--prefix=/usr" or "--prefix=/usr/local" switch to "./configure". As mentioned above, i would prefer "/usr/local" for an unpackaged compile. It just makes things easier to cleanup/uninstall later, if it mucks up or anything.

If the source has a "configure" stage, which would be surprising if it dosen't, though i haven't had a lot to do with Qt based compiles (by that i mean some packages will use a script that automates that stage) ... running "./configure --help", just to dump the options isn't a bad initial idea.

>>
IE4? What's that? Oh, yes that browser thing ...
>>

(grin)

Yeees, that thing, hehehe

>>
... incidentally, which currently has IE6 (via IE5).
>>

I still remember when i naively thought i could just uninstall IE5 and go back to IE4 (grin)..... But, I really don't know (grin), i'm sure it's lurking out there somewhere.

jm

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

nelz — Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:09 am

Author: nelz

Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 9:09 am

Marrea wrote:

Anyway, on the spur of the moment I thought I would just check out the version on the LXF68 DVD and, guess what, there was a nice SuSE rpm lurking there.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Rhakios — Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:20 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 11:20 pm

Quote:

on the spur of the moment I thought I would just check out the version on the LXF68 DVD and, guess what, there was a nice SuSE rpm

I wonder if we can expect a post from nelz, that's why he does the disc and so on and so forth

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Marrea — Fri Jun 10, 2005 10:54 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 10:54 pm

Rhakios wrote:

In any event it runs fine, now why did I install it?

Um, perhaps just to find out if you could? !!

I have been playing about with this again this evening and came to the conclusion that I must have something missing somewhere (yes, I know - probably in that space between my ears). I thought I'd uninstall and try re-compiling and reinstalling - just in case it hadn't installed properly the first time. I did a make uninstall and saw various error messages about certain directories being empty, which made me think again that it had probably not installed properly in the first place.

Anyway, on the spur of the moment I thought I would just check out the version on the LXF68 DVD and, guess what, there was a nice SuSE rpm lurking there. So I didn't even have to download from the rpmfind.net site you kindly provided. A quick "Install with YaST" - which placed the program in usr/local/ - and it's now up and running.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Rhakios — Fri Jun 10, 2005 8:42 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 8:42 pm

Marrea wrote:

One thing that is puzzling me is that I tried to install it system-wide as per the instructions (ie becoming root and then doing a make install) http://albumshaper.sourceforge.net/download.shtml but the program has placed itself in my home directory. I'm not sure that is right.

Just gave it a go, and while it leaves a copy in my build directory, it has also installed system wide under /usr, the output gives it away.

Code:

rhakios@pythia:~/tmp/albumshaper_2.1_src> su -c "make install"
Password:
cp -f "bin/AlbumShaper.bin" "/usr/bin/AlbumShaper.bin"
cp -f -r "bin/images" "/usr/share/albumshaper/"
cp -f -r "bin/text" "/usr/share/albumshaper/"
cp -f -r "bin/themes" "/usr/share/albumshaper/"
cp -f -r "bin/translations" "/usr/share/albumshaper/"
cp -f -r "bin/xmlConversion" "/usr/share/albumshaper/"
cp -f bin/AlbumShaper /usr/bin/AlbumShaper;

However, I'm not especially happy about a compiled app installing under /usr, I'd prefer /usr/local. In any event it runs fine, now why did I install it?

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: BBC Onlie (sic)

Marrea — Fri Jun 10, 2005 2:35 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 2:35 pm

Guitarists use different instruments for different songs/tunes because a Strat for instance might be better suited to one song and a Les Paul to another. Or they might pick up an electro-acoustic or a classical, or whatever they feel will be most appropriate for the sound they want to produce.

Aren't operating systems the same? I use Windows, Linux and Mac roughly equally at home (only Windows at work though) and enjoy them all. Each has its strengths and weaknesses (although I'm a fairly new Mac user so can't speak authoritatively about OS X yet). I'm all for diversity.

It does seem rather pointless endlessly arguing about which is best. If you like Windows, use it. If you like Linux, use it. If you like Mac, use it. If you don't like 'em, don't use 'em. Simple. Freedom of choice.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: BBC Onlie (sic)

youlikeicecream — Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:15 pm

Author: youlikeicecream

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:15 pm

funny thing is that the SPARC has had 64-bits for a loooong time,

"Go on my Sun"

Linux although a little unstable has more advantages for the Home user than developers. Linux releases are rarely similiar and differ if only slightly from one machine to another. this makes for an uncertainty in the API so that developers cannot be sure as to whether the software will run on another given machine. Windows has a very slow release cycle and therefore nearly every windows installation will have the same kernel and DLL version so ... life is easier.

From an end user's POV, Linux is better ... there is a wide range of Free QUALITY software which is richly featured and has a hoard of ENTHUSIASTIC, HONEST programmers and developers backing and supporting it.

I was discussing with a friend of mine last night that for both Windows and Linux there are distinct features that we like and dislike in both. The only real difference is that with Linux, WE are able to do something about.

anyone up for Longhorn? (I wouldn't touch it with yours - lol)

can't really comment on MAC OS as the last time i used a macintosh the current version was System7 !!!!!!

Mike

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Marrea — Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:48 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:48 pm

jjmac wrote:

>>
But, it's also not really fair to compare a pre-compiled packages install with a source package ... is it ?

jjmac - agreed, I'm not comparing like with like. Unfortunately so often there aren't rpms available. Rhakios however has discovered one for AlbumShaper so if I can't get the source version working I will then try the rpm.

Quote:

I can remember when i used to install different updates of IE4 ...

IE4? What's that? Oh, yes that browser thing that came with my first home version of Windows !! I still run Win 98 on a spare desktop, incidentally, which currently has IE6 (via IE5). These days I hardly ever use IE, having largely moved over to Firefox.

Re: BBC Onlie (sic)

Marrea — Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:31 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:31 pm

Rhakios wrote:

For qmake you need qt3-devel and you will probably need to give the full path to call it as it's unlikely to be in your default path.

Incidentally, I find that SuSE usually does set QTDIR

Rhakios
Many thanks. I had a further go at this last night and discovered that QTDIR was in fact set. (I do have qt3-devel installed by the way.) I managed to get Album Shaper compiled and installed (I think!) but can't get it to open. I ran out of time last night and will need to have another look over the weekend.

One thing that is puzzling me is that I tried to install it system-wide as per the instructions (ie becoming root and then doing a make install) http://albumshaper.sourceforge.net/download.shtml but the program has placed itself in my home directory. I'm not sure that is right.

Quote:

Incidentally, incidentally, oh look:

http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/sourceforge/a/al/albumshaper/AlbumShaper-2.0-1.i586.html

says on the page it's for SuSE 9.2

Thanks also for this link, of which I was unaware. If I find I can't get the source version to run, I will try this rpm.