[wplug] dependency hell

[Brandon Kuczenski]

Okay, I now regret ever, EVER listening to my "userfriendly" windows-using
friend who told me all those months ago to "Use Redhat 9.0, it's the most
mainstream Linux distribution."  Now I'm just trying to upgrade the Gimp
to some version that is not stone-aged, and I'm in dependency hell.
First, the automated RPM upgrade tool, up2date, requires some kind of
registration and, from what I've read, won't work anyway because it's
outdated, now that Redhat has gone all Enterprise.

So AFAIK I'm forced to fix dependencies (and there are many) by hand, only
I can't do that because upgrades aren't permitted for rpms that are in use
by another rpm.  Witness:

one required package for gimp-2.0.4-0:
        fontconfig >= 2.2.0 is needed by gimp-2.0.4-0.fc2.1

But, if I try to update fontconfig to 2.2.3-1, I find:
        freetype >= 2.1.4 is needed by fontconfig-2.2.3-1

BUT, if I try to update freetype to 2.1.9-1, I find (circularly):
        freetype = 2.1.3-6 is needed by (installed) freetype-devel-2.1.3-6

And, finally, I cannot update or erase freetype-devel because:
        freetype-devel >= 2.1.2-7 is needed by (installed) fontconfig-devel-2.1-9

Geez.  I guess I've gotten rusty with Linux, or (flame bait) spoiled by
FreeBSD.

Am I missing something obvious, or am I just out of luck for having this
bastardization of a system running an unsupported distro and a patchwork
of incorrectly installed packages?

Also, I'm becoming aware of my own frequent posts to the list.  Am I
becoming a nuisance yet?  If so, have no fear: I'm taking a vacation
starting Wednesday.

-Brandon