Hi,

1. I prefer to download tarballs and compile them rather than binary/source RPMs. Is this this a very bad thing?

2. While doing this, I notice that Redhat seems to put everything in /usr rather than /usr/local

Everyone seems to expect stuff to be in /usr/local

Is there a good reason why Redhat differs? Should I attempt to fix this? Should I install new stuff to /usr/local instead?

3. Since installing Redhat 7, I have
a. Upgraded the kernel to 2.4.14
b. Upgraded lots of software
c. Installed loads of new software
d. Upgraded libraries as needed by (c)

Now the problem is RPM is all clueless about which versions of software I really have installed.

What would be a good plan of action from this point on?

installing from tarballs is BETTER than using rpms, as you compile the source on your own machine, and it therefore should run better. Most redhat RPM's are compiled for i386, and as such ignore much of the new feaures in i686 architecture. it's not that much differencem but it is a difference none the less.

RPM's only really exist to make the whole thing a load more easier.

2) you can choose where to install programs to by setting an option at ./configure --install-path or something like that, it's nothign to do with the distro where it geos, that's down o the install code in the tarball.

3) well.. don't use RPM's... you can check the dependencies and if you're confident they are satisfied with your system then you can always force the installation and hope it works

Hmm.. yeah... I know the advangages of compiling the sources. Despite what my last post may indicate, I'm not a clueless newbie... I'm a clueful newbie.

I know I can change the install path with --prefix=/usr

But *every* source I've seen so far assumes that stuff is installed in /usr/local. Why does Redhat install it in /usr then?

The place I started getting really confused was when I decided it was time to compile GCC 3.0... There is configure option --with-local-prefix which is supposed to point to the header files... which defaults to /usr/local
The readme *specifically* advises against setting this to /usr. But if I don't I can't compile GCC.

I know I could work around this by dumping the header files somewhere else... but that seems like a rather crude solution.