port Amiga's Installer to Linux! End the pain!

[adolescent]

bhoggett wrote:

That's the point though. Installation from source tarball does not address "dependancy hell". You still have to chase up all the required software yourself, make sure you have the right versions, and ensure you're not going to conflict with anything already installed. This gets out of hand very easily when you have to upgrade x to make y work but then need to upgrade z to work properly with the upgraded x, etc...

And porting the Amiga Installer would not address this.  The supplied package managers address dependecies very well.  I think what the original poster wants is Windows style installer (perhaps he's afraid to ask?) that includes all neccessary libs in the setup package.  That or more staticly linked binaries.  I dont see either happening anytime soon.  

[bhoggett]

mikeymike wrote:
Now for what I guess must be a stupid question - why isn't this done by default?

It is. By default urpmi is set up to recognise all the packages supplied on the CD/DVD distribution.

Oh, you mean why isn't it configured to download stuff off the net?

Two reasons: (a) the mirrors are not maintained by Mandrake, so they cannot be resposible for their availability and (b) not everyone lives in the same place. Pointing everyone to a set of default mirrors would make those mirrors unusable pretty sharpish, specially straight after the release of a new version.

Actually, Mandrake do maintain a set of repositories, but you're expected to be a Mandrake Club member to access them. This is only fair after all.

- edit - VLC still won't install.  It gets much longer through the process, dying at "some package requested could not be installed: vlc.....i386 (due to unsatisfied libdv[=>0.99]) (Y/n) Y

I can't help you there, as I don't have enough info. I've just run through the same procedure and it installed version 0.7.2 from plf just fine. It first asks me to choose one of the GUI front ends (I chose kvlc) and then downloads 7 dependencies, including the front end. I can only assume that it may have failed to download one of those dependencies, but in that case you'd have had some other error messages along the way.

Bang.  Head.  Against.  Desk.

Which one won?  ;-)

One other amusing thing about attempting to install Linux distros on my PC - I've gone through quite a few, and some of them failed on IDE detection.  When attempting again to install Mandrake I wondered whether the APIC might be having anything to do with it, so I disabled it, then IDE detection went fine.  I now do a dmesg and find that it re-enables the APIC on linux boot.  Go figure.

The bare-bones kernel loaded for the installation procedure isn't the same as the full kernel installed for you to run linux. I have to admit I haven't had this problem.

[bhoggett]

adolescent wrote:
And porting the Amiga Installer would not address this.

Absolutely.

The supplied package managers address dependecies very well.

I agree. Installing and uninstalling stuff has become far easier with them, and there's less chance of permanently screwing up the system with conflicting files.

I think what the original poster wants is Windows style installer (perhaps he's afraid to ask?) that includes all neccessary libs in the setup package.  That or more staticly linked binaries.  I dont see either happening anytime soon.  

That's the problem isn't it. If all packages came with everything they needed included, people would be screaming about "bloat". The same goes for everything being statically linked. As it is everyone is screaming about "dependency hell". It's a lose-lose scenario.

I can understand the frustration, but I don't think the situation is as bad as many make it out to be.

As a matter of fact, Mandrake installed on my laptop far quicker and easier than WindowsXP would have done, considering that for the latter I'd have to supply a whole plethora of hardware specific drivers, while Mandrake just found and enabled everything out of the box, as they say.

[minator]

Bang. Head. Against. Desk.

To get vlc 0.7.2 working on BeOS:

Download from BeBits
Unzip

That's it. Who needs an installer?

It's automatically added to the list of movie players so I can open videos with it in a single mouse click.

Now, why can't Linux do this?


Note: BeOS was part based on the Amiga.

[Tomas]

BeOS was indeed my favorite OS on x86 computers... Too bad be inc sold it, as it looked like a very promising OS  :-(

Small, responsive, boots quickly, stable, great multitasking and ontop of that, it was really userfriendly!

[spihunter]

O.K. Linux folks,

Another problem is if your using a Debian based distro and you want to install an RPM. I know there's something out there that can do this but I read that its not a sure thing.

For example:

I really want to try out the new demo of "main Actor" from Main Concept but they only have an RPM of the demo for download! Doh!

[spihunter]

@Tomas,

I agree!. Beos was the new Amiga for me. It just flew on my 500 Mhz PIII. I had that machine dual booting Beos 5/ Win 98. Beos made Win98 look like a joke on the same hardware.

Actually I read that one of the main reasons Beos finally died was because Microsoft bullied the hardware companies ( ex: Dell, Hp) from offering dual boot machines with Beos. It would be very different world right now if this had not happened.

[Tomas]

@spihunter:
have you tried "apt-get install rpm" and then use that rpm to install with?? There is also supposed to be some software out there, that converts .rpm packages into .deb, but i dont recall the name at the moment.

[adolescent]

The package that converts RPM to DEB files is alien.  Although, I've never used Debian so I have no experience with it.

[mikeymike]

bhoggett wrote:

mikeymike wrote:
Now for what I guess must be a stupid question - why isn't this done by default?

It is. By default urpmi is set up to recognise all the packages supplied on the CD/DVD distribution.

Oh, you mean why isn't it configured to download stuff off the net?

Two reasons: (a) the mirrors are not maintained by Mandrake, so they cannot be resposible for their availability and (b) not everyone lives in the same place. Pointing everyone to a set of default mirrors would make those mirrors unusable pretty sharpish, specially straight after the release of a new version.

Then ask a locale question and configure it like that.  And Linux isn't maintained by Mandrake either, so "they cannot be responsible for that either", nor is X, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc, etc.

- edit - VLC still won't install.  It gets much longer through the process, dying at "some package requested could not be installed: vlc.....i386 (due to unsatisfied libdv[=>0.99]) (Y/n) Y

I can't help you there, as I don't have enough info. I've just run through the same procedure and it installed version 0.7.2 from plf just fine. It first asks me to choose one of the GUI front ends (I chose kvlc) and then downloads 7 dependencies, including the front end. I can only assume that it may have failed to download one of those dependencies, but in that case you'd have had some other error messages along the way.

Ok, how did you ask it nicely to install vlc? :-)

Bang.  Head.  Against.  Desk.

Which one won?  ;-)

Linux.  I conceded and booted back into Windows.

One other amusing thing about attempting to install Linux distros on my PC - I've gone through quite a few, and some of them failed on IDE detection.  When attempting again to install Mandrake I wondered whether the APIC might be having anything to do with it, so I disabled it, then IDE detection went fine.  I now do a dmesg and find that it re-enables the APIC on linux boot.  Go figure.

The bare-bones kernel loaded for the installation procedure isn't the same as the full kernel installed for you to run linux. I have to admit I haven't had this problem.

Reminds me of NT4 and having to slip it the NT4 SP4 IDE driver to get it to recognise large IDE disks :-)

[bhoggett]

minator wrote:

Bang. Head. Against. Desk.

To get vlc 0.7.2 working on BeOS:

Download from BeBits
Unzip

That's it. Who needs an installer?

It's automatically added to the list of movie players so I can open videos with it in a single mouse click.

Now, why can't Linux do this?

See above. BeOS is like AmigaOS in that there is only one version. There are dozens of Linux distributions, and at least a handful of different "base" builds the others are derived from.

If you stick to the packages for your distribution, they do get installed automatically and added to the appropriate group.

Note: BeOS was part based on the Amiga.

Or so the hype went. I haven't seen all that much similarity, except in the lack of really good software. I think except for some minor inspiration, there was very little that was actually based on AmigaOS at all.

[bhoggett]

mikeymike wrote:

Then ask a locale question and configure it like that.  And Linux isn't maintained by Mandrake either, so "they cannot be responsible for that either", nor is X, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc, etc.

That's not the same thing. While the various applications aren't maintained by Mandrake they are packaged, tested and released by them or though them as far as the mdk rpms are concerned. So Mandrake have some control.

The mirrors are completely independent and can disappear any time and without warning or notification to Mandrake. If they were pre-configured, then Mandrake would have to field all the irate users' complaints when mirror X turns out not to work straight after they install their system.

There are drawbacks to using free operating systems, particularly when you use the "free as in beer" distributions.

Ok, how did you ask it nicely to install vlc? :-)

I opened up a shell. I typed "su -" then followed it with my root password when prompted, then I typed "urpmi vlc". It came back giving me a whole list of front end packages to choose from. I chose kvlc. Then it gave me a list of packages that it needed to install to satisfy the dependencies, and asked me if that was OK. I said "y".

During the installation, some of the gpg keys weren't cleared, and I was asked to confirm that I still wanted those packages installed. I sad "y" again.

That's all there was to it.

Alternatively, you can start the software installer, search for vlc, select all the packages that have vlc 0.7.2 in them (the dependancies will be selected automatically) and install. This will install all the front-ends and plug-ins too.

It could be that you are missing a repository from your urpmi config, or it could be that something is conflicting. However, it's hard for me to diagnose the problem from the information you've given me.

Reminds me of NT4 and having to slip it the NT4 SP4 IDE driver to get it to recognise large IDE disks :-)

Except that in this case it must be something specific to your hardware, as I've never come across it. With NT4, it was not a surprising thing really when you consider the amount of time between NT4 being released and SP4 coming out.

AmigaOS wasn't exactly devoid of hard disk size problems either as hardware advanced and the OS became more and more obsolete. Suddenly you'd need to install all sort of patches and third party filing systems just to make your hardware usable.

[mikeymike]

bhoggett wrote:
mikeymike wrote:

Then ask a locale question and configure it like that.  And Linux isn't maintained by Mandrake either, so "they cannot be responsible for that either", nor is X, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc, etc.

That's not the same thing. While the various applications aren't maintained by Mandrake they are packaged, tested and released by them or though them as far as the mdk rpms are concerned. So Mandrake have some control.

The mirrors are completely independent and can disappear any time and without warning or notification to Mandrake. If they were pre-configured, then Mandrake would have to field all the irate users' complaints when mirror X turns out not to work straight after they install their system.

As opposed to "all the irate users' complaints" that the system doesn't work in the first place?  Mandrake's own software update system can take care of maintaining the independent update source list.

Ok, how did you ask it nicely to install vlc? :-)

I opened up a shell. I typed "su -" then followed it with my root password when prompted, then I typed "urpmi vlc". It came back giving me a whole list of front end packages to choose from. I chose kvlc. Then it gave me a list of packages that it needed to install to satisfy the dependencies, and asked me if that was OK. I said "y".

Hmm, I tried that, but the usual "dependency, dependency, sod off" occurred.  Next time I boot into Linux I'll paste the exact errors.

Alternatively, you can start the software installer, search for vlc, select all the packages that have vlc 0.7.2 in them (the dependancies will be selected automatically) and install. This will install all the front-ends and plug-ins too.

If you mean the Mandrake Control Centre, VLC isn't listed in the search IIRC.

It could be that you are missing a repository from your urpmi config, or it could be that something is conflicting. However, it's hard for me to diagnose the problem from the information you've given me.

I'll paste the urpmi config command I use next time, and try a few different options.

Reminds me of NT4 and having to slip it the NT4 SP4 IDE driver to get it to recognise large IDE disks :-)

Except that in this case it must be something specific to your hardware, as I've never come across it. With NT4, it was not a surprising thing really when you consider the amount of time between NT4 being released and SP4 coming out.

No, it wasn't, but the business of allowing the APIC to work after the install is just over-complicating the process.  The installer should support everything possible and provide the resulting OS installation with the same capabilities.

AmigaOS wasn't exactly devoid of hard disk size problems either as hardware advanced and the OS became more and more obsolete. Suddenly you'd need to install all sort of patches and third party filing systems just to make your hardware usable.

It would have been the same for x86 had it lingered in computer limbo for the amount of time the Amiga has, but it hasn't.  APICs are pretty standard nowadays, my motherboard is over two years old.

[minator]

See above. BeOS is like AmigaOS in that there is only one version. There are dozens of Linux distributions, and at least a handful of different "base" builds the others are derived from.

If you moved everything around on BeOS it would still work, a query could find (say a library) in a different location in under a second.

However VLC didn't even need this, it decompressed as a single file which could be run from anywhere.

Note: BeOS was part based on the Amiga.

Or so the hype went. I haven't seen all that much similarity,

The CEO had a number plate of "Amiga 96" given to him.

The Amiga used to be the multimedia machine, Be tried to take on that mantle with the best media subsystem going.  It also had high responsiveness, good multitasking, and had very good useability.

The Amiga in it's day was the most advanced machine around, for the most part it's now been surpassed.  BeOS picked up where the Amiga left off using many of the same concepts (system wide scripting, datatypes etc.) and added more, in many cases it's technology has yet to be surpassed - all the fuss about metadata being added to Longhorn, OS X and Gnome (storage) is funny because it has been in BeOS for *years*.

Like the Amiga it is also very efficient, my PC (800MHz Athlon, 512MB RAM) never goes into paging despite having a number of apps running, WinXP on the same machine is significanty slower and starts paging like crazy as soon as I open a window.

---

Actually I read that one of the main reasons Beos finally died was because Microsoft bullied the hardware companies ( ex: Dell, Hp) from offering dual boot machines with Beos.

Yes, Be even offered the OS for free at one point and it still wasn't included.
Microsoft later settled out of court for $23 million.

[bhoggett]

mikeymike wrote:

As opposed to "all the irate users' complaints" that the system doesn't work in the first place?  Mandrake's own software update system can take care of maintaining the independent update source list.

This sounds to me like a demand for a free OS which also takes away all the user's responsibility when using it. Like it or not, no such thing exists.

Mandrake's software update system does maintain a list of supported mirrors for the updates. They are not responsible for contributions (i.e. mdk packages compiled by other people). If you're a club member (all purchasers of Mandrake boxed packs and Club subscibers are members), you do get access to repositories maintained and supported by Mandrake.

For the free download, all that Mandrake directly support are the updates to the main distribution software. Everything else up to the user.
 

Hmm, I tried that, but the usual "dependency, dependency, sod off" occurred.  Next time I boot into Linux I'll paste the exact errors.

Please do. There's obviously something wrong with your system, but it's hard to be certain what without feedback.

If you mean the Mandrake Control Centre, VLC isn't listed in the search IIRC.

The software installer can be accessed though the Mandrake Control Center, or directly through the menu System->Configuration->Packaging. If you cannot find vlc through it, my guess is that urmpi isn't configured right, but then "urpmi vlc" shouldn't work either.

I'll paste the urpmi config command I use next time, and try a few different options.

In the above menu, you will also find the Software Media Manager. If you have configured urpmi properly using EasyURPMI, then you should have at least 4 entries there: main, contrib, update and plf.

Bear in mind that dependencies are usually found across repositories, so while vlc 0.7.2 is on plf, some of the dependencies aren't, which is why you need to have all the repositories available.

No, it wasn't, but the business of allowing the APIC to work after the install is just over-complicating the process.  The installer should support everything possible and provide the resulting OS installation with the same capabilities.

Perhaps so, but that depends on exactly what is causing the problem. It may not be the installation kernel that's causing the problem. I was just guessing.

It would have been the same for x86 had it lingered in computer limbo for the amount of time the Amiga has, but it hasn't.  APICs are pretty standard nowadays, my motherboard is over two years old.

But not all motherboards and BIOSes implement standard things in standard ways. Some do very strange tricks (Dell systems being a particular culprit in the non-standard stakes). Again, your description doesn't begin to tell me why the Mandrake installer may be having a problem with your APIC.

[bhoggett]

minator wrote:

Yes, Be even offered the OS for free at one point and it still wasn't included.
Microsoft later settled out of court for $23 million.

While that's true, the real reason Be died was management incompetence, and the real reason the OS didn't really take off was that the third party software available for it was for the most part utter dross. Nice OS, shame about everything that went with it.

I was actually a fan of the OS for its efficiency and simplicity, but I was left cold by Be Inc's reluctance to keep the OS up-to-date with hardware developments, so that BeOS was always unusable on many cutting edge systems at the time, and the third party software available was a massive let down, not just in quantity, but in quality.

Microsoft's behaviour was publically blamed for Be Inc's failure - not least because that gave more weight to Be's case against them - but in reality they were merely one of many factors. The main reason Be failed were Be themselves.