[plug] RE: plug RedHat 5.1

[John Summerfield]

On Fri, 12 Jun 1998, The Thought Assassin wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, John Summerfield wrote:
> > On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, The Thought Assassin wrote:
> > > IMHO, if a package has a priority (i.e. required, important, standard,
> > > optional) and clear dependencies, that is all the newbie needs to know.
> > > I don't know of a system that gives more, anyway.
> > Cetainly there are (well, I expect there are) dependencies. However, those
> > don't help a novice whether the package is useful.
> Mixed with priorities, they are more than enough.
> Install everything marked "important" or higher, install whatever things
> in "standard" you aren't sure you won't need, resolve the dependencies in
> such a way that the first rule still holds.

Choices aren't always so easy: one of my first installs was to a 486DX33,
8 Mb and 170 Mb.

Diskspace prevents installing anything not essential to the tasks the
machine is to perform.

How was I (as a Unix neophyte) to decide whether to install this?
Name        : sed                         Distribution: Hurricane
Version     : 2.05                              Vendor: Red Hat Software
Release     : 9                             Build Date: Thu Oct 23
07:08:49 1997
Install date: Fri May  8 01:50:35 1998   Build Host: porky.redhat.com
Group       : Utilities/Text                Source RPM: sed-2.05-9.src.rpm
Size        : 31403
Packager    : Red Hat Software <bugs at redhat.com>
Summary     : GNU Stream Editor
Description :
Sed copies the named files (standard input default) to the standard
output,
edited according to a script of commands.


There are lots of editors: why would I want this one?



> 
> > (I have to say it's getting hard to remember those packages that had me
> > completely bamboozled the first time I installed Linux.)
> The first time I installed Linux, it was as simple as the above.
> I didn't remove any packages that were listed as "standard", I just added
> some packages from lower priorities and whatever they depended on.
> I got a few conflicts, so I removed a few things I had selected. (but
> nothing from important or above)
> Horribly easy. The only real problem I had was that I was installing via
> ftp, and back in the dim dark days, pppd had a default baud rate of 9600,
> unbeknownst to me. Obviously, it was slow going for a while there, but 
> Matt soon spotted my error, and everything was happy.
> Had more trouble with )(, but that was in the days before X-configurator
> programs made it easy for us.

Getting a working system isn't the issue: that much was easy. Choosing the
products that I would find useful wasn't.

Yes, I've found I need sed - not because I wanted to use it, but because
some scripts I want to use use it.

If you used any unix implementation significantly before installing Linux,
you opinion doesn't count because you were never in the position of a
novice installing Linux.



Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.