On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:55:27 -0600 Karl Larsen <k5di@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > It's been 2 days since I loaded F7 on this computer with a 160 GB > HD and so far I have got one application (Thunderbird) working after > being told which lib file to yum in. This should have been in F7 by > default. > You should have done a yum list installed > all_pkg_list before you upgraded. Then after install you just edit it to run as a shell script and put yum install -y in front of each of those packages with a wild card on the end of the package name, and you are right back where you started (almost :-) ). In vim, about 2 minutes worth of work, though the update run might take hours. > I am still trying to get Skype to work. I have tried a lot of > things but still not the intuitive things used here on Fedora Core 4. > They don't exist on F7. > Inevitably, as people ask for/demand more user friendliness from the OS, it gets more complex. The obfuscating layers and configurations become deeper and harder to understand, the interactions more prone to error. > There are some harder things I must have working at least as well > as here on FC4 or I will just stay here. Getting F7 to do things is a > pain. I think for my way of doing things I better drop back to Red > Hat 9, or even 7. > > Karl > This isn't a knock against you. If you're giving up after two days, maybe you shouldn't be running Linux at all, at least not Fedora, a bleeding edge distribution. There are few challenges in the world today. I read recently that over 500 people made it to the top of Everest this year, and they have ladders on the difficult parts. Those of us running Fedora are probably doing it partly for the challenge of it, the kick we get when we overcome problems. If problems don't do anything for you but make you angry or depressed, you would have to be a masochist to continue running such a cutting edge distribution where there are guaranteed to be problems. Especially if your hardware is outside the norm and you are running it right after release. One suggestion I have for you, if it is financially possible is to have enough hard drive that you can install and configure the next generation while still having a bootable earlier version that works. I saw 500 gig sata 300 drives on zipzoomfly for $110 US, and 500 gig USB2 drives there for $130 US, free shipping. You could have a spacious 5 generations on such a drive. Even Windows users face these issues. In large corporations there are dedicated techs who do nothing but resolve computer issues for users, and they are swamped (at least the ones I've known). And that is years after release. Cheer up, you'll solve these problems, and in a month or so they will be forgotten.
