Re: Most Recent version and etc

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 07:23:53AM -0500 or thereabouts, Garrett Mickelson wrote:
> Leonard,
> gnome.org takes you to the Ximian website, last I checked. Also, I don't

http://www.gnome.org is not the same as http://www.ximian.com, I'm
pretty sure :) 

> recommend compiling Gnome from source, as this is an extremely daunting
> task. There are way too many gnome modules and apps to install. The RPM
> install alone is almost 120 packages. Also, I believe that there are no
> Gnome tarballs available either.

Gnome comes in tarballs, sure. ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/ for them.
(Actually, since it's a GNU project, I think it would have to come as
tarballs: I believe tarballs are the preferred method of packaging
for GNU programs?)

I agree that there are a _lot_ of packages. You don't have to have
them all, though. If you (original poster, that is) want to learn 
about Gnome, Linux, and such stuff, I would actually think that 
Gnome's a great thing to try to compile: there is a lot of it, you
have to get it in the right order, you have to make sure that the
prefixes are all correct (so that when you make install a package and
then try to compile the next one, the next one knows where to find
the first); you will meet all the i18n stuff, the whole "tar xfvz foo;
cd foo; ./configure; make; make install" routine, and goodness knows
what else.

Then 90% of people go "argh, give me a package manager!" and 10% feel
so in charge of what's going on that they eschew package managers 
forever after :)

Seriously: yes, you can get all of Gnome in tarball format. The
distributions all add patches and images which they prefer to the
defaults. RH has a ton of patches to gdm ("the graphical login 
screen thing") and a picture in black and white of people, one of
whom is wearing a, um, red hat. Ximian have an overlapping ton in
patches to gdm and a rather cooler picture. Some distributions tweak
some programs (gnorpm, for example) to be runnable by users who
type in the root password; others leave those programs in a state
where you have to be root, and not just a user who knows the root
password. Etc etc.

Telsa