These days, using Mandrake Linux 9.2 as my home desktop, I have found a certain type of tool almost too good to be true for a Linux user (at least it used to be, it has been around for awhile now.) Easy package management. A non-Linux user might ask, “What is a package?” and also “How was it before easy package management?”

When I first looked at Linux in ’99 and ’01 I found it to be severely difficult for an untrained Unix user to install programs. I decided to bypass Linux and use Windows where things seemed to be easy. Besides, I reasoned, why fiddle with this mess, I wanted to get work done on my computer!

A couple of years went by and I wanted to build my own computer, but figuring the cost of Windows into the the project wasn’t an option. I decided it was time I take a look at Linux again. To my surprise things had gotten quite a bit easier to use… except again for the packaging. Okay, Okay, what is a package? There are several different types of packages on Linux (tgz, deb, rpm) but I will concentrate on rpm. Rpm stands for Redhat Package Manager. It initially made installing software on Redhat Linux easier, but had grown into a format used by a wide variety of Linux distributions. The main ones that I can think of are Redhat/Fedora, SUSE, and Mandrake Linux.

The packages were released in a distribution specific file. So you might find an rpm build specifically for Fedora Core 1, SUSE 9.1, or Mandrake Linux 9.2. The package is similar to an install file (setup.exe) in Windows. “Wow! I double click the rpm and the program installs!” was my first reaction.

Most rpm files however required that certain software already be installed on my computer. At times these could be some really obscure files due to the wide array of open source tool kits, widgets, window managers, etc… So if my computer didn’t have a specific .so file (similar to a .dll file in Windows) the software couldn’t run.

I decided to plug away and learn how to be a real man. I would have to continue on the long and arduous journey of compiling and searching for missing dependencies. I heard of numerous similar stories of people running into “dependency-hell.” While maybe not the nicest term, it aptly described the situation of many people trying to install software on Linux. Hours of grueling work and searching on the net to get something up and running on your system. My double clicking software installing days were over… because the typical went something like this:

I would find a brand-new-super-cool-neato program that I was just dying to run. Obviously if I didn’t have this program my computer would not be super cool anymore. I would download the rpm file and double click it or type “rpm –i packagenamehere.rpm.” at the command line to install. Oh boy… here we go… missing dependencies. Sometimes I would throw in the “–nodeps or –force” into the mix to see if it would help. Often times it would not. Okay, download that file it says it is missing and install it… oh wait, that file has missing dependencies also!

I began to get tired of searching out missing shared object files to run some obscure package only to find out that when I found the package that had the file in it, it also needed another altogether different package so that it too could be installed. I thought, is this what “manhood” is all about?

Amidst my searching for better days in Linux-land I found a program called YUM. Yellow dog Updater, Modified was the official lingo behind the acronym. It was just what I was looking for. To quote from the YUM webpage (http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/),

“Yum is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for rpm systems. It automatically computes dependencies and figures out what things should occur to install packages. It makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm.”

While a great program for Yellow dog Linux or Redhat/Fedora, I couldn’t seem to get it working for Mandrake. (The main reason behind the switch to Mandrake from Redhat by the way, was that ALSA would find my two sound cards in Mandrake while in Redhat it would not without significant messing around with config files).

Enter Urpmi. Urpmi is Mandrake’s program for easily installing and updating packages. If I have my repositories setup correctly, I barely ever think of dependencies anymore. It truly is amazing. It even has a graphical front end to the system.

I click the check boxes in front of the programs I want, bingo, software downloads and installs on my computer. It could be compared to Lindows’ Click-n-Run warehouse. Only free!

That’s the story. Here’s the info. If you want to setup your Urpmi repositories for maximum easy-ness for program installage on your computer, visit some of the following sites. Remember, these places often deal with the command line side of Urpmi as it is a command line utility. However, once you have the repository setup with Urpmi you can use Mandrake’s install utility, Rpmdrake. Rpmdrake is a graphical user interface to Urpmi. If you have Mandrake installed, search for it in your menus.

Tonight Denise and I went out and bought a printer. Well, it was a printer, scanner, and copier all in one. Guess what? Yep… It is Linux compatible. I am more than pleased with Hewlett Packard’s stance on Linux with printers and to a bit smaller degree with their hardware in general.

When I emailed them earlier about a specific printer, they were gracious enough to tell me the specific product I was looking at was not compatible with Linux, but then went so far as to tell me about a comparable product that was… get this… the email was signed by a real person too!!!

What Denise and I ended up settling on was the HP PSC 1210. I have already scanned, copied and printed with it, and oooooooh baby is it nice. I tossed the old HP 660cse in the garbage dump because it was too old and decrepit to give away.

So… I say this…. because….. I like Linux, and I like HP. So there.

I finally got the nerve to install Redhat 9 again. I have in the past found it impossible to get my AC’97 soundcard to work. Therefore I have never used the -only- version of Linux I have ever paid for.

First I discovered recently that this soundcard is backwards from most soundcards, and only Windows at the time has drivers to map this, or so I thought… So, plug the speakers in the pink jack (normally reserved for microphone use… because that’s what the pink jack is for). IT WORKS!!! SOUND!

Okay, but this was undesirable, because when I plugged my mic into the speaker jack (green), it would create some sort of digital reverberation… ??? When I turned the microphone volume up (which oddly enough the mic didn’t work) it would scream digital maddness out of the speakers.

Back to ALSA, and lo and behold… it now REALLY supports my soundcard. Like it was supposed to (as it said) months ago. I guess I shouldn’t complaint though seeing how it is free software. Yeah, my sound works, and I am happy to report that I am typing this on Redhat 9.

Denise just IM’ed a bit ago and said the Knoppix download is at 80%… I hope it’s done soon… We gave it a little extra time by not leaving this afternoon at 5pm. Well, we aren’t staying home another night for that reason alone… I guess driving all night long isn’t a big deal to me, but I didn’t want to possibly break down on the side of the road at 2am in the morning.

Our car isn’t doing that good… and we have to take all precautions. :-)

Tommorow morning… hopefully early… we are off. We seek to avoid major Labor Day traffic around Chicago, and are grateful that we are leaving the land of dreadful gas prices… $1.89 for regular unleaded.

Oh boy… we are watching the lamaze videos. As opposed to taking the class. It was $50.00 even with financial assistance. So we opted for the videos from the library. :-) Tax payers dollars at work. Mine and yours!

So apart from my wife, pregnancy, and all of the other things of life… it seems I have found a new cool thing. Booting Linux off of a CD. Doesn’t change the hard drive… shows people how cool it is… and can be used as a complete system, or even a rescue disk. Okay… I’m a geek, I’ve been carrying a mini-distro on an 8cm cd in my wallet since yesterday. It isn’t that cool, but it’s neat to show it off to unsuspecting Windows users… HA!

The one I have been using is called LNX-BBC (Bootable Business Card)… it’s small enough to fit on one of those business card CDs. I’m bummed out because the web-browser that’s in it is way cheap. It’s called BrowseX, and it doesn’t do any modern web standards. Plus there aren’t many cool X-Windows apps… Definitely almost rescue-disk-only territory. So I have basically tuned out the idea of tiny distributions, and am downloading as I write this, Knoppix… it’s made by a German dude, and is supposed to be awesome. We’ll just see about that.

Alright… gotta go… more videos to watch!!!