gEDA-user: Fedora Core 5 installation notes

[Stuart Brorson]

Hi --

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006, Patrick Doyle wrote:

> On 7/29/06, Stuart Brorson <sdb at cloud9.net> wrote:
>> Sorry for the top post.
>> 
>> Funny you should ask about FC5 and the installer.  The 20060124 install
>> CD has older programs which would choke the install on the newer FC5.
>> Also, Red Hat has once again boned everybody by changing what is
>> installed and what is not on FC5.
>> 
>> Anyway, I am even now busy testing an upgraded installer with new
>> stuff on it.  If you can wait a day or two I will put a preview iso on
>> my website and make an announcement to the list.  It won't necessarily
>> have the latest/greatest gEDA/gaf (which is awaiting Ales's release),
>> but it will have plenty of other good stuff.  And it should run to
>> completion also!
>> 
>> Stuart
>> 
> I hope you don't mind if I bottom post :-)

Good form!  Better than my top posting!

> I can easily wait a day or two... I have other options, including
> installing the RPM's and finishing component selection for my design.
> I would rather do that then duplicate work that you are in a
> significantly better position to do than I.
>
> Just so I can plan and scheme in the mean time, do you mind if I ask a
> couple of questions?
>
> Will the new improved lemony scented installer install something newer
> that January 23rd?  (Not that I anticipate it matters to me yet, but I
> am just curious).

Yes, I have updated most things which have been updated.  That's part
of making them work with latest Fedor release.  This will include the
latest gnucap, icarus verilog, pcb, and a few others.

I won't update gEDA/gaf yet since Ales is working on a major release.
'Tis a pity since there is a lot of goodness in the latest gEDA/gaf,
like improved usability.  However, I anticipate yet another CD release
after Ales does his release.

> Would it be technically feasible for the tarballs on the CD to be
> actual CVS tree snapshots, from which one could perform an update if
> one were so inclined/adventurous/desperate?

I often do that, but since most programs have had a recent snapshot,
I'm not anxious to grab the latest out of CVS.

The GEDA/gaf stuff in CVS is definately better than the old stuff.  I
just don't want to pre-release.

> Personally, I would rather work with gEDA tools installed from source,
> because I anticipate that there will be one or two things which I will
> want to attempt to change (hopefully for the better).  For
> OpenOffice.org, I would rather install from RPM's and live with
> whatever limitations I find.  For gEDA, I have higher hopes (for
> myself, at least).
>
> If I were ever to start my own business (a fond dream of mine)
> designing hardware using the gEDA suite, I would be more than willing
> to maintain a repository for my Linux distro du-jour.
>
> Speaking of Linux distros du-jour (or is it du-jours?), what to the
> majority of the gEDA developers use for their distros?  (At 2.5 weeks
> into FC5, I'm not terribly wedded to it, but I also don't enjoy
> switching distros just for the fun of saying "I've tried all
> 17,325,242 different Linux distributions available").  I just switched
> to FC5 from SuSE 9.1 because a) I got a new hard drive; and/or b) SuSE
> 9.1 was enough out of date wrt the CD installer that I just didn't
> want to spend the pain of getting the right version of glibc so I
> could get the right version of GTK so I could get the right version
> of...

In my day job and at home I tend to run Fedora Core.  One machine is
FC1 (!!!), another is FC2, and I just built a new one with FC5.

I have install media for many different distros & releases and try to
install/test the gEDA CD on as many as possible.

Stuart