Re: the best Linux for me

From: Rahul Jain (rjain_at_nyct.net)
Date: 01/07/05 

Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 22:36:19 -0500

Trent Buck <geragohpx@tznvy.pbz> writes:

> Up spake Rahul Jain:
>> 1. Install the kernel you want. kernel-package lets you do that using dpkg.
>>
>> 2. Install and use the gcc you want. I see 2.95, 3.0, 3.2, 3.3, and 4.0.
>> You can install all of them and use the -V flag to gcc to pick the one
>> you want.
>
> The vmware script doesn't know this. Actually it wants to compile the
> vmware kernel module with the exact same version of GCC that compiled
> the kernel, so building my own kernel SHOULD fix (1) and (2).

Well, that's the kernel itself that wants modules compiled with the same
compiler as the kernel, but ok. But shouldn't it use $CC as the C
compiler?

>> 3. /bin/sh isn't supposed to be guaranteed to be bash. In fact, I think
>> bash has different default settings if it's invoked as /bin/sh. If
>> vmware wants /bin/bash, it should just call that, but you can always
>> uninstall ash.
>
> The vmware scripts should call /bin/bash or have their code corrected.
> Uninstalling (d)ash is *not* a solution, it's a kluge.
>
>> All simple to fix.
>
> Fixing the former requires building a new kernel. I don't consider that
> trivial.

You consider wrong, then. :)

apt-get build-dep kernel-image-2.4.XX
apt-get -b source kernel-image-2.4.XX
dpkg -i kernel-image-2.4.XX*.deb

It's just a matter of learning how to use the package management tools.

> Fixing the latter (correctly) requires changing the bang path
> of the vmware install script. Another obvious problem is that the
> installed files wont be tracked (yes, I tried alien).

You can somewhat easily make a debian package out of vmware, depending
on how demented their install procedure is.

> The point isn't that these problems can't be resolved. The point is
> that generally commercial applications are designed and tested against
> Red Hat / Fedora, so users of that distro SHOULDN'T experience ANY
> problems installing them. The OP asked for a reason to run a
> $NOT_DEBIAN distro; that is the only one I know of.

Fair enough, but the problems are rather a non-issue, and if enough
people cared about vmware anyway, there would be some sort of installer
package that would build a package from the upstream package. If it's an
RPM, it's possible that all that's needed is a patch in
/usr/share/alien/patches that has the correct stuff in it to package it
according to debian standards. 

-- 
Rahul Jain
rjain@nyct.net
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist

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