New user encountering problems

[Kerry Hoath]

Debian put stuff in nonstandard places?
Actually Debian is the most FSSTND complient distribution out there at the
moment. You must remember; that the best thing about standards is that there
are so many to choose from.

Regarding "lots of stuff doesn't compile" it usually means the person between
the chair and keyboard has (1) not edited the package Makefiles,
(2) not configured a kernel source tree,
or (3) doesn't have a clue on where the include files live.
Many packages such as the updated network card drivers *REQUIRE* * R E Q U
I R E * a *configured* kernel source tree on the system. The kernel
provides many of the include files necessary for sane compilation, and you
don't get linux/autoconf.h without running make config or equivalent.

I admit that many packages scatter config files all over the file system,
/etc, /usr/lib/ /usr/share; /usr/etc/ /usr/local/etc/ /opt/etc; /var/lib
etc; at least Debian puts *all* config files in etc. This does make it simpler
when your system gets big with lots of packages on it.
There are allways very good reasons why Debian does things the way it does,
for example the conf.modules generated from /etc/modutils/* and the like; either
take a look at the Debian policy documentation, or the docs in /usr/doc

Compiling specialized software on a Linux system requires you to be on nodding
terms with Makefiles and at the very least; able to read the comments in
config files and edit apropriately. Redhat may have more out of the box rpms
but they often don't behave as you'd expect them to out of the box without
a bit of tweeking. Most packages use gnu autoconf so compilation is a breeze;
however learning about your compiler's make system; where system files are etc
is an excellent investment in time if you want to consider yourself a
competant Linux admin or you must tinker with things.

Regards, Kerry.
On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 10:55:21PM -0500, Brent Harding wrote:
> I've liked debian for awhile, but tons of stuff won't compile, because the
> locations of files are a little screwy. Why put stuff in non standard
> places I don't know. How does one configure a redhat kernel when compiling
> anyways? I'm thinking about using it some time, suppose I need the 3c59x
> driver support for networking, can I config it like a normal kernel or does
> redhat have tools to make this easier?
> At 11:24 PM 9/22/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >Hi
> >	It is possible to build a speakup kernel from the Red Hat source
> >RPM. Just skip the patches that can't find their files, they don't apply
> >to the i386.
> >	However, the kernel will build, but unless you use a rh supplied
> >config, your modules will have unresolved symbols all over the place. I
> >don't think speakup agrees with some of the patches RH applied to their
> >kernel rpm, for it is not a clean source. They've applied all sorts of
> >stuff that are beta, or even alpha. Not wise, I believe they do it to try
> >to get their distro to support more hardware.
> >	Personally, I think slackware is the best, closely followed by
> >debian.
> >
> >On Fri, 22 Sep 2000, Kirk Wood wrote:
> >
> >> I believe this is a kernel problem. Once the kernel starts expanding (you
> >> get the loading and the dots, then the kernel quickly takes over. My guess
> >> is that you used the kernell source provided by RedHat. If you did, then
> >> you should download the kernel (possibly from kernel.org) and apply the
> >> patch compile, etc.) RedHat doesn't provide the complete kernel and as a
> >> result the built images don't work correct. Sorry I can't give you more
> >> complete details. Just that it is common to discover you can't build a
> >> working kernel with speakup from the RedHat source package.
> >> 
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Speakup mailing list
> >Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> >http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
--
Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.eu.org
Alternates: kerry at emusys.com.au kerry at gotss.spice.net.au or khoath at lis.net.au
ICQ UIN: 62823451