What distro sticks to ./config(ure) make, make install montra? I hate RPMs. I've been using RH7.3, and have some spare PCs lying around (go to a local corporation and ask for old hardware...I was able to build 6 PCs w/ an average config of 192MB ram 400MHz AMD/PII, 10GB HDs from stuff that they no longer used...they gave me 9 machines total). I have an extensive library of books about most things Linux and the majority of the time the compile method is prefered to the RPM method. So what distro is still *pure*.

Regards,
Ryan

Slackware... ??

What Linux needs is a Install Shield Like program with a management feature for uninstalling the apps.

Install Shield only won't help. The problem is in dependencies. In Linux, most programs are not statically linked to their libraries. In Windows, they are. When a program don't have dependencies (like OpenOffice or Mozilla), there's no problem. On the other hand, all programs with statically linked libraries (for example popular ones like ssl) will make a standard Linxu install BIGGER.

First off your wrong about the statically linked vs dynamically linked. Many windows apps have dynamically linked libraries (DLL). In fact I believe Linux/Unix uses a much better format for having dynamically linked libs. I mean look at Open Office/Star Office, they both have a very nice install program.

In my understanding, refering to the original question, the most source based linux distro isn't slackware nor RH and Co., it is gentoo - during isntall you are given precompiled binaries to manipulate tar, filesystem manipulation, etc, you install the distro by extracting all the needed programs from bz2balls (precompiled binaries), then you compile your own kernel, and then you are off to wonder how to install everything else if you don't feel right in home with compilation from source. Another is LFS. I think you can put these two distros side by side, even Slackware has its own tool to install pre-compiled binaries.

Here is the thing...I like the RH graphical installer. I think what I will do from now on is to install just the development packages and the kernel development stuff. Then install everything from source from there on in.

What I actually did with my RH system - I installed the bare minimum to boot the system and bring up network and internet, and from that point went straight for source (except a couple of packages like XFree86, mozilla, glibc, libc, gcc, etc. I installed them as precompiled RPM's)

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, maybe it's because my lack of Windows knowledge, maybe both...
What I meant is that in Windows a situation where you can't install a program because you have libraries in a wrong version is very rare (only Service Packs and DirectX, as far as I know), when in Linux it's quite often. The other reason may be that in Linux many programs use one library, because it's OpenSource, it's code is available etc. In Windows, many libraries are properitary.
I think that Unix/Linux format of dynamically linked libraries is better. But in it's not perfect. RPM format needs a replacement, maybe a never version, that will handle dependencies easier. But I'm not sure how to do this...

Ok well since you lack some of the windows dll info I'll do my best to inform you. Actually a ton of windows programs use DLL's (Dynamically Linked Libraries) In fact one of the biggest problems with windows is known as DLL hell, because you can only have one version of a DLL on the machine. And being a windows programmer I can tell you this problem is very common and breaks a lot of older programs. The advantage of linux is you can have different versions of the "so" (aka dynamically linked library) I think it is very possible for someone to write some type of install shield. Please if anyone knows a reason why not tell me.

hello,
you can have soemthing like (actually much better than) isntallshiled - it is called checkinstall , it makes deb, tgz or rpm packages out of programs compiled from source.

http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/

i have been hearing alot about this RPM WIzard, it is suppose to be similar in function to the Install Shield of windows, and there are 3 versions for KDE GNOME and X11, anyone know much about it ?

What is the problem?
apt-get debian or emerge gentoo - no rpm's needed.
There is a apt-get version for rpm's.I don't know how good it is though.

Thanks for info, ChaosX2. I program only for Linux, so it's hard to believe that there might be only one version of a library allowed... Thanks. I learn a new thing every day.

No problem, I guess my systems programming course was good for something.