[Gambas-user] Re: Maybe a weird question

[Michael Isaac]

Joseph,

All of that was very well stated.  I fully agree with you and I think 
your insight is spot on.  Ive been an avid Slackware user ever since Red 
Hat 8 left a bad taste in my mouth due to several issues with the RPM 
system.  At that time I had only used Red Hat and never experienced a 
distribution that required real user intervention to configure it and 
make sure everything was in good running order. Remember I was a serious 
newbie.  I had only been using Red Hat for a month (maybe two).  After 
the switch I got that taste of freedom and absolute control over my 
system that only Slackware promotes.  I was hooked and I never looked 
back.  Since then I have used many distributions and I nothing compares 
to Slackware.


Joseph Murphy wrote:

>  
>
>>I really don't mean this as an insult, but I'm going to say it anyway.  
>>You don't know why .so files get links with a version number and 
>>you're running Slackware, the least user friendly (by design) of the 
>>major Linux distributions?
>>    
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>>I think a lot of the end-user weaknesses you say you've found with 
>>Linux to date might actually be weaknesses of Slackware, which was 
>>never meant for end users.  The rest of the world has package 
>>management, automatically updating app shortcut and menu systems, 
>>etc.  Slackware.... has tarballs.
>>    
>>
>
>  
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>>If you really like the "building everything from source" thing I'd 
>>suggest you at least try Gentoo, which goes halfway to package 
>>management with its "portage" system while still allowing you to go 
>>source-only.  I have no idea whether Gambas works on it, but I'm 
>>pretty sure you'll be able to strip it down as much as you like.
>>    
>>
>
>Rob I find this, not to be insulting either, brain dead.  I have tried 
>mandrake, redhat, suse and gentoo. The first time I tried Linux I had to 
>install from a hand full of floppies.  I think RPM sucks the big one.  And 
>slackware does have a package management system that is far superior then 
>RPM.  They don't call it RPM Hell for no reason.  Don't believe the BS you 
>read in Linux Format or any other Linux mag that says that Slackware 
>doesn't have a  package management system.  It has the best package 
>management system.  There are at lest three programs for automatic updating 
>of slackware packages.  If you are interested go to www.linuxpackages.net 
>and checkout packages for slackware. 
>
>I find the branding that is going on with mandrake, redhat and suse very 
>distasteful.  Of the distros you mentioned I liked gentoo the best but I 
>wasn't happy with the way they handled run levels.  And as for mandrake, 
>how  lack of functionality equates to ease of use I have no idea. I think 
>mandrake is the worst of all the major distros.  But if all you can do is 
>click with the mouse you can get mandrake up and running.  I think this is 
>the reason that some people think slackware is not user friendly.  It 
>doesn't have useless eye candy  and you might need to actually type 
>something sometimes.  But as an end user system Slackware is the best.  I 
>have no idea where you get the idea that it was never intended to be an end 
>user system.   Don't believe the BS put out by idiots that write in 
>magazines.  All they know are RPM systems.  So for them if it's not RPM it 
>is too hard for them to use because they might actually have to do 
>something other then click with the mouse.
>
>You don't understand what I said about the .so files.  They are three 
>different variants of zero. I don't understand why someone would have the 
>exact same file linked under three different variants of zero.  The value 
>of having a <name>.so.3 or <name>.so.3.1 is obvious.  But having file names 
>like gb.so, gb.so.0 and gb.so.0.0.0 is brain dead. A dot zero is the same 
>version as a dot zero dot zero.  I see no purpose for this at all.
>
>The weakness of Linux is in how programmers install their programs.  Take a 
>look at /usr/bin.  It has thousands of files with no order to them at all.  
>Gambas dumped most of it's programs in there with names like gbx, etc.  
>Take a look at a windows box in C:\windows\system and you will see 
>exactly the same kind of crap.  This is because of the search path problem.  
>What needs to be done is have recursive search from the PATH declaration.  
>This would allow installing all program files in a more thought out 
>fashion, such as /usr/bin/gambas/gbx .  If this became the standard of how 
>linux used the PATH I wouldn't have two thousand plus files, most with 
>meaningless names, in /usr/bin.
>
> You can get a recursive PATH by adding a little scripting to profile like 
>this.
>
>DIRS=( $(echo /usr/bin/*/) )
>DIRS=( ${DIRS[@]%/} )
>D=$( IFS=: ; echo "${DIRS[*]}" )
>{provided by Chet Ramey}
>
>You can then replace /usr/bin in the PATH declaration with $D and then when 
>looking for gbx it can be found in /usr/bin/gambas.  But this is not done 
>on any distro.  Then you have the problem of getting people that write 
>their install scripts to put their stuff in a directory under /usr/bin.  
>And while I'm ranting they can use more meaningful names then gbx.
>
>And this is where compiling from source works nicely.  You can set prefix to 
>a value such as /usr/bin/gambas and then make a package of the compiled 
>code to be installed with pkgtool, slackware's package management tool.  
>This is a much simpler process then making an RPM. 
>
>Joseph
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