Re: Tux Racer 0.10 Released

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Keith Lucas wrote:
> 
> > When your car starts shuddering
> >and shimmying at 62mph, you don't just shrug your shoulders and make
> >sure you drive at 61 or 63.
> 
> Actually I do exactly that. I then take it to the first authorised dealer I
> find, park it outside, tell them to fix everything that needs fixing and then I
> carry on the journey by taxi.

Right - but you don't just keep working around the problem until the
car destroys itself in a fiery wreck.  That's what's happening with
your Linux box.

> I couldn't get Tux to compile because I've got an old linux system. I don't have
> hours spare each day to run this "catch-up" race with releases of things.

So you avoid the couple of hours it takes to unstall a shiney new copy of
SuSE or RedHat or something - and as a consequence waste ten times as long
struggling to install packages that are utterly confused by the piles and
piles of little workarounds you've done to get the previously built stuff
going.

I think you may be overestimating the time it takes to install a clean new
copy of Linux.  Back when you last did it, it *WAS* a serious pain.  But
on a modern distro, you can get up and going in 20 minutes.

I recently installed SuSE 6.3 on a laptop that had never run Linux before.
I did it while waiting in line at the Schlotsky's drive-thru window one
lunchtime!

Once everything is installed cleanly, you can dump a new package on very
quickly.  Most libraries you need are either pre-installed with the OS
(if you had enough disk space to go for a maximum install) - or easy to
get of the CD-ROM.

> {Mind you, come to that I find it no longer compiles it's own kernel, so that
> might get rectified. Of course, without a LAN, or a working tape drive, I can't
> back up the existing system in order to install a new OS on it. I've come to the
> conclusion that the simplest thing to do is buy a new hard disk and start from
> scratch.}

Having two hard drives (one for your stuff - the other for the OS and crap
you downloaded from the web) definitely makes this easy.
 
> I did mention this before. About not having time to beat things into submission.
> And when things don't install, I tend to just regard it as being the fault of
> that box. In the past I've mentioned to people about FOO din't install under
> slackware 1.BAR and they go "WTF are you still running that for?" so these days
> I don't.

Spending a couple of hours installing a clean modern OS will help IMMENSELY
and more than pay for itself in saved time downstream.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1@airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker@hti.com      (work)



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