Re: Mixing tarballs and RPMs

[jlh geodesic com]

Tom Gilbert wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Jun 1999 jlh@geodesic.com wrote:
>
> ->Thanks.  I probably shouldn't call it a bug, but when a

You're right, it was just a matter of learning more about gnome
than I wanted to at the moment. :)  I am getting the install back
to where it was and all will be well soon.

What I'd like to do eventually is to get a complete tarball installation
of gnome, which I had at one time for the .99 release, but it
takes a lot of time to get all the pieces together.  Once
they're all there, though, you can build gnome anyplace you
like and updates are easy.

But for now its live and learn, at least I know about the
'sysconfdir=/etc' flag so things will go better next time
around.  Thanks much for the advice,

John

> It shouldn't come to such drastic action as that. I'd hesitate to
> reinstall redhat. You have a huge number of options still available before
> that! Anyway, if you choose to stick with 'official' redhat stuff, you'll
> be going a loooong while between updates.
>

...

> <rant>
> Blowing away an entire Redhat installation of over one
> thousand assorted applications because one of them isn't quite right is
> more than extreme. It makes me angy to hear stuff like this. Its
> unnecessary and a shame to see. Especially when the fault is
> technically yours for not reading the docs before installing. Just doing a
> ./configure --help before you started would have avoided all of this.
>
> We all make mistakes, I'm not calling names or being rude. I've done it
> myself. But I didn't blame gnome, I didn't call it a bug, and I didn't
> blame Redhat.
>
> If you were running Windows, and you tried to install microsoft office 97
> onto your floppy disk drive instead of you c:\ drive, you wouldn't call
> Microsoft and accuse them would you?
>
> Your comment at the top about unexpected behaviour *is* unfair. The
> ./configure script does a hell of a lot, and is very smart, but it is
> *not* phsycic. It cannot read your mind. If you call configure with no
> arguements, it has to make a guess, and for most people, /usr/local is a
> good place to default to. Redhat is not linux. It is a distribution of
> GNU/Linux, which also happens to come in 20 or so other distributions, and
> runs on more hardware configurations and platforms than should technically
> be feasible.
>
> Be thankful for gnome, and admit your own mistakes. Its ok to make them.
> </rant>
>
> Tom.
>
> --
>    .------------------------------------------------------------------.
>    | Tom Gilbert, England                        pingu@linuxfreak.com |
>    | www.tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk    tom@tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk |
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