On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 21:58 +0100, Chris Jones wrote: > > Can I paraphrase your advice as: "Fedora is a system with a nice > > packaging and update mechanism. Don't use them."? > > I guess it is a matter of "each to their own". > > For what it is worth though, I agree with you. After many years experience > with linux the one peace of advice I would give people now, when setting up a > system, would be to ONLY install packages from properly maintained and > compatible sources. I have time and again run into problems due to my > installing packages from source, such that now I only do it if a) the package > is ABSOLUTELY essential. > In the case of Fedora this means RPM packages and to get them via yum(or apt, > smart) from one of the various repos available. > > To take some the the examples given by Ric, > > nvidia : I recommend MOST STRONGLY to not install the official installer. The > reason being is the official installer overwrites the standard GL libraries. > Once you have done this it is practically impossible to go back to the OSS > driver. Luckily both atrpms and livna supply kernel module RPMS for the the > nvidia drivers, that work around this problem. URRRP! Sorry! I beat my brains out for MONTHS trying to get the heavily openGL intensive 3D environment Croquet to work. Many MONTHS wasted, of what should have been devel time, down the crapolla as the problem was immediately fixed by installing the nVidia driver. Burn me once, but not twice. Oh hell nah. I go with what works for me. > The one issue people often quote with this is when a new kernel is released, > you might get that kernel as an update before livna/atrpms has provided the > rpm for your new kernel. Luckily, both sites provide yum plugins to protect > against this (just run 'yum search yum' to find them). > > firefox : I currently use the remi repo (http://remi.collet.free.fr/) which > providesFF2 rpms. Been running these for some time now with ZERO problems. It took about a year for Remi to offer it after 2.0 was released, too. I was already running 2.0 for ages and even have the Beta 3.0 installed now... with ZERO problems. > > java. http://www.jpackage.org/ provides rpms for java. > > Bottom line. I am sure that someone can quote some odd esoteric package for > which there is no rpm repo available, but for the main ones most people use, > there are MUCH better and safer alternative than the old 'install from > source' mantra... Call it a mantra if you wish, I have my reasons. Number One is my sanity. :) Ric
