[in a discussion about whether it is easy for newbies to install stuff on
 their Linux machine]
> In theory- you are correct. in practice, this doesn't work, especially 
> for the novice user- RPMs just fail due to dependency problems way to 
> often.

What I usually tell novices who use Redhat, for example, is: get the latest
release (forget all the stuff people tell you about *.0 releases, etc.),
and install *everything* if they can spare the disk space. Then you are very
unlikely to need to install any additional RPM yourself.

The biggest mistake I see Linux novices do is install Redhat 7.3 ("because
people told me it's more stable!") then try to install a newer KDE's RPMS
("because people told me it supports Hebrew better!").
If such a novice tried such a thing on Windows, i.e., keep Windows 95 but
try to upgrade its user-interface to Windows XP's, do you think (s)he'll
succeed? I sincerely doubt it.

Even I, certainly not a novice, try to install only a very small number of
RPMS not coming directly from Redhat, such as, for example RealPlayer
and lyx. Those extra RPMS are usually created to minimize dependecies (e.g.,
compiled with old shared libraries, or even statically). I have some
RPMS I installed in the Redhat 7.0 days, and they still work very well.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, Jan 12 2003, 9 Shevat 5763