[wplug] Package grief

[Hagbard Celine]

I'm not a fan of *anyone's* package managers, but I've been told that I'm a
stubborn old cuss... :o)  Building an entire system from source does have its
advantages, in that you usually end up with everything you need (the developer
can tell you what ancillary files you need because he/she/it had to build the
source, too).  There is a down side, though, because you have to watch for
possible incompatibilities, such as incomplete type definitions when trying to
build tcsh under glibc-2.2.x...  There is also the issue of the time it takes
to actually perform the builds.  On the 1000 Mhz Athlon-based box I just built,
glibc-2.2.4 will build in 20 minutes.  On your P133, it would probably take
most of a day (it takes about that long on my 486 DX/100, at any rate).

The long and short of it, I suppose, is that the only route to easy package
installations is a one-size-fits-all scheme such as WinBlows.  The more
flexibility you want in a system, the more the need to lay in a supply of
Extra Strength Excedrin :o)

Just my four half-cents' worth...

Hagbard
> 
> Is it just the packages I am trying to install or are most of the
> application packages for Linux difficult to install?  This week's grief is
> being caused by Gnuplot.
> 
<etc, etc...>