Hi again, god I have so much on the go - don't know wether I am coming or going. I have a friend here in Sweden who has tried to install Avast home linux edition. I explained that one does not install but run avastgui and then enter code and such like. He is running the same distro as me slackware 11 but his hardware is totally different to mine. He cannot seem to load avastgui. He even did a completely new install of slackware 11 but no dice? What other problems can cause avastgui not to load?
I am aware that this subject has been written about in great detail - I haven't found anyone that has had problems starting the avastgui?

Please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts on the subject.

bookie

I had plenty of issues with that avast crap, so much I got rid of it. On the first scan it got stuck on an iso in my home directory. After that, I had to re-enter my registration number again and again (normal?) and each time it would crash. I've never found out what was wrong, although I did receive some message about an unknown statement when I first used it. Missing libs? Incompatibel libs?

Frustration gets the better of all of us at times - done it got the t-shirt. It must be a hardware problem if we are usig the same distro? Thanks for your comments.

bookie

If it won't start it's possible that there are unmet dependencies. Issuing the start command in a terminal should output error messages indicating the problem.

Thanks Masonm, do you think you could elaborate a bit about unmet dependencies? I appreciate your comments - just don't know what unmet dependencies are.

Thanks bookie

As a rule, applications do not run in isolation: they may need to access other packages in order to perform certain tasks. The first are said to be "dependent" on the latter. When some or all of their dependencies are unmet (=missing), your applications will either refuse to run or at least miss some functionality.

My estimate: it is a dependency issue indeed. I did get a warning that the software contained an unknown statement. I wonder, however, whether it's not simply a lost cause. I noticed that avast anti-virus database dates back to July 2006 - in other words, it would appear that avast is simply not up to date with the latest Linux libraries. Or someone has simply done some careless coding. It wouldn't be the first time that a third party application contained some serious programming error.

Anyway, I switched to Clamav. It looks like something from the eighties (but so does avast for Linux if you ask me) but the main thing is that it's running fine.

Thanks jay73, I guess that sort of answers my question.
Thanks again for your help.

bookie