Re: Emacs vista build failures

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Alfred!

On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 05:40:58PM -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    > >> Since GNU/Linux works for so many others, I suspect there was
>    > >> a problem in installation.  The best way to solve them is to
>    > >> ask an expert to do it for you.

>    > > I didn't need an expert for Windows XP Home, Windows XP Pro, or
>    > > Vista.  I spent 30 years as a computer programmer with a fair
>    > > amount of unix experience. I think I should be able to do a
>    > > simple install.

>    > As mentioned, GNU/Linux works for so many others that it's
>    > probably an easily solvable problem.

>    GNU/Linux _works_ fantastically, but that's not what's under
>    discussion.

>    _GETTING_ a G/L system working is the issue, and that's best
>    described as a slog, or a nightmare.  There are any number of blogs
>    which describe how "you just insert the DVD, and 2 hours later
>    you've got a complete working system".  I've never met anybody in
>    real life who's had that experience.

> Sorry, but I have no clue what you are talking about.

Translation: "You're a liar or an idiot".  Please, there's no need for
that sort of riposte.  How about "I didn't have that amount of hassle"
instead?

> I know of no GNU/Linux system that takes 2 hours to install and then 2
> days or more to get usable...

No, of course not.  With enough accumulated expertise, any G/L system can
be installed and configured in a few hours.

> I recently reinstalled gNewSense and the installation took me about 5
> minutes, excluding the time it takes to copy data from a CD-ROM to a
> HDD.  But I know that it does take over a full day to install Windows
> XP, it is something I sadly do once every other week.

:-)  OK, but clearly since you do it every other week, the process takes
much less than 20 days.

> Getting a printer working was trivial as well, I did not even need to
> specify the driver.

Good for you!  It just worked.  You had a magic spell in your
distribution.  They either work 100% or totally fail.  In the latter
case, they give you NO information to help you diagnose things.  They
say, in effect "don't worry your pretty little head about this, leave
everything to me".  When they fail, and they always have failed for me,
it takes some experience to realise that the fault is with the magic
spell, not the person invoking it.  I detest this.

> What you say was true some 10 years ago, I still recall having to hand
> edit /etc/printcap, write my own filtering rules! and write four
> different floppies just to be able to boot a GNU/Linux system that
> didn't even have a compiler included.  But this has not been the case
> for the past 5+ years, or even close.

Well, I've described what it took me.  Maybe Debian Sarge was particularly
troublesome.  Maybe I'm just stupid, maybe the original poster here is
just as stupid, and maybe my friend who talked me through configuring my
ethernet card over many days, he earlier having taken just as long, is
also stupid.  But I have illusions of being of around or above average
capability in installing OSs.

> GNU/Linux these days is _far_ easier to install than Windows XP or
> Vista...

The original poster said he couldn't get his Linux connected to the
internet.  I can empathise with that completely.  Network configuration
under Linux (I think it comes from BSD Unix) is brain-damaged - it is
fragmented into many (not merely several) midget sized configuration
files, for which there is no coherent documentation - no network-config
HOWTO, nothing.  Just the man pages for each such file.  And when your
network doesn't work, you're left having to examine the entrails on
/var/log/messages and friends.  You don't get error messages on stderr.
I could strangle the arrogant cretin that created the error message "no
route to foo.bar" when he could so easily have announced "can't open
/etc/route" (or whatever the file actually is).

I challenge you to write a recipe, suitable for a newbie without an
internet connection, how to get a GNU/Linux system connected to the
internet, on the assumption that any magic spells supplied by the
distribution have failed.  Point out where he can find the necessary
info, and how he could discover that that is where he has to look.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).