On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 07:25:22PM +0100, Bungee wrote:
I seem to be stuck with Inkscape 0.41 at the moment :( If I try the 0.42 RPM I get a symbol library error - sorry can't remember the exact details. If I try to compile the more recent 0.42.2 'make' reports that I don't have recent enough gdk and gtk libraries.
I'm using mandrake 10.1, which I would have thought was *reasonably* up-to-date, and I'm not keen on the idea of fiddling around with these libraries and risking a lot of dependency problems for the sake of one application :(
One option is to try the Autopackage release. No guarantees, but it may install where the others did not.
Also, if the RPM you tried was a Mandrake RPM, try the static RPM. If it was the static RPM, then try the Mandrake RPM. (The mdk rpms' are not on the download page, but you can get to them at the SourceForge File tracker).
Note that the changes between 0.42.0 and 0.42.2 are just bug fixes, so if you can get any of the packages from either release to work for you, you'll have the same level of functionality. A large portion of the bug fixes were related to packaging and platform issues, most of which weren't relevant to mandrake, so in practice you may find little difference between the two releases for your system.
I'm surprised that it reports not sufficiently up to date gtk libraries; we haven't changed gtk versions in a LONG time (in order to avoid exactly these types of dependency issues).
Hmm, my bet is that you're trying the static RPM, and the issue is not that your libs are not new enough but rather that they're just different from what's included in the static RPM. But who knows.
Lastly, sort of a side comment - I too used Mandrake for a long while, and think it's a great distro, especially for folks new to Linux. However, I was finally driven to give up on it due to the madness of "RPM Hell", such as you describe. I switched to gentoo and have absolutely loved it. Took a lot of time to learn how to do stuff manually that was all automated in Mandrake, but it was worth it; that extra knowledge has given me a lot more control over the systems and removed a lot of the "black magic" of things. Most importantly, doing huge system-wide upgrades of kde, gnome, and the like is painless (just takes the time to upgrade).
In addition to Gentoo, Debian and Ubuntu also have these same advantages, the difference being that you don't have to wait for things to recompile with those systems. Ubuntu differs from Debian in that Debian is supported by the community alone, while Ubuntu is Debian plus has a company supporting it as well.
I am coming to believe that RPM-based distros are holding Linux back. It makes it too cumbersome for users to do otherwise simple upgrades, and adds complexities for software developers that really shouldn't be there.
Bryce