Hey darkHelmet .. I have another problem ... can you help me with this one ... it has to do with installing gtk ...it says I need alot of dependencies .. so I downloaded them and installed them, but caught a snag along the way .... when I ./configure pango (one of the required files for gtk) .. I get this error:

checking for GLIB - version >= 2.4.0...
*** 'pkg-config --modversion glib-2.0' returned 2.4.2, but GLIB (2.2.3)
*** was found! If pkg-config was correct, then it is best
*** to remove the old version of GLib. You may also be able to fix the error
*** by modifying your LD_LIBRARY_PATH enviroment variable, or by editing
*** /etc/ld.so.conf. Make sure you have run ldconfig if that is
*** required on your system.
*** If pkg-config was wrong, set the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH
*** to point to the correct configuration files
no
configure: error:
*** Glib 2.4.0 or better is required. The latest version of
*** Glib is always available from ftp://ftp.gtk.org/.


I installed glib .. and it recognizes that I did .. but it tells me to delete glib2.2.3 ... how do I do that, or how do I modify my LD_LIBRARY_PATH (I cant even find that)?

nevermind .. I typed in ldconfig and that fixed the problem ...

do you know what ldconfig is?

ldconfig is a utility that updates your ld.so.cache file (I think that's its name). Anyway, all that means is the cache file lists the available libraries in the system. The way the cache is created is by looking at the directories listed in your ld.so.conf file (usually located in /etc). ldconfig is that actual utility that will read ld.so.conf, and then rebuild the contents of ld.so.cache. Whenever adding a library, you typically have to rerun ldconfig to adjust for the new library.

ld.so.conf is just a simple text file. It's a sequence of directory paths that contain libraries on your system. It's pretty straightforward... if a bit cryptic naming-wise.