New to linux

[Robert Jonsson]

Hello again,

tisdagen den 15 juli 2003 13.46 skrev Varchas Ramila Subrahmanya:
> Hello all,
>             Thank you very much for the help and advice. I would also like
> to reply to some of the questions. I have already developed a complete VOIP
> software on Windows platform that was coded using VC++ and C++ language.
> Now I want the client application to be developed on linux. 

Kdevelop should be a good choice then, be prepared though, kdevelop is NOT bug 
free, when in trouble ask here or check the bug database (or fix it yourself 
;).

> I actually went 
> thro' the INSTALL file and I did the same but I got many errors. First was
> when I tried to configure it said autoconf version was only 1.4 and that
> binary required autoconf1.6. And one other try was when I typed "tar -xjf
> kdevelop ...XXX.tar.bz2" but after that even that failed. Now I could
> install the Kdevelop using the debian site. But I am not able to compile
> any program .. .it says "sgml2html is missing" .. "cannot make" .. etc ..

Probably a missing package, see further down...

> Am really wondering that Windows people have made a real good work in terms
> of installing since I do not need to download so many packages from
> different sources. 

This is a commonly debated subject. If you ask most people here you will learn 
that the package handling system in Windows is considered to be among the 
worst ever known.
In windows it is common practice to attach all needed libraries in the package 
when you release a program, this includes shared libraries. When the 
installer installs the program the shared libs are copied to 
c:\windows\system or similar. If there was an older version of the lib in 
that directory it will be overwritten.

The good side of this is that you almost never need to install additional 
packages when you install software in windows, it's already included.

The down side is that since shared libraries are substituted at will, the NEW 
app will work, but you may have borked everything else on the computer if 
there where dependencies towards the old version of the substituted lib.

I think newer versions of windows (e.g. XP) has better handling of this, but 
what I've heard about it sounded like a real cludge...

...
The reason it works the way it does in Linux is a controlled attempt at 
providing an environment where such things will never happen. 
* Libraries are versioned
* Packages are versioned
* Packages are controlled by a database
* Packages are divided into subpackages (dependencies)
* ....

The downside then is that when you install e.g kdevelop it depends on several 
other applications, so to install kdevelop you first need to install a few 
other tools. (in this case there seems that there are a few requirements 
missing in the kdevelop requirement list, autotools, qt-devel etc... the 
installer should have not let you install the kdevelop package until all the 
requirements where met)

Deb or rpm(as is used in other distributions) is a complex system to handle 
manually.
This is the reason there are tools that handle package installing in an 
automated way, for debian this is 'aptget' i believe. 
When using 'aptget' you should not need to think about dependencies - ever - , 
this is atleast true if you only install software from a supported 
repository.

Sooooo... I would argue that installing packages -in binary form- in Linux is 
miles ahead of Windows IF you use the automated tools.
I use mandrake which uses rpm and another automation tool, urpmi, different 
name, works the same. I rarely have trouble installing anything these days as 
long as it's available in a repository (installing packages from a bleeding 
edge repository (development versions) is sometimes a tad ...fun ;)...)

> KDevelop has a QT SDI and MDI but when I select that it 
> says "No QT libraries found" ... 

You are probably missing the devel libraries of QT, it is common practice in 
Linux to separate a package in several parts, for QT that means that the lib 
in itself resides in one archive e.g qt3-3.1.deb, and the devel archive in 
another e.g qt3-devel-3.1.deb (names are completely made up, I don't know 
what they usually are called in Debian)

> Maybe since I am new I still do not know 
> the structure of how to download programs and run ... Thanks
Yes, the problem is that the learning curve is quite steep in the beginning. 
After that it gets easier, then you know where to look when problems arise 
(and they will).
But in general it is a very good idea to ask on mailing lists, it brings down 
the learning curve less steep.


Regards,
/Robert

> Regards
> Varchas R S


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