For the whole week I've had installed on my laptop, RedHat9 has been driving me nuts. It's my first time with Linux I thought, and I liked the customizability, so I thought I'd give it a try. I've had a lot of errors and most things haven't worked right over the past week (hardware issues) but everything I've been able to step around except installing software. I have two major problems when it comes to that.


1. When I've tried to install from source tarballs using the common ./configure, make, make install trio, I don't even get past the configure section. I first get an error that says it can't find certain X headers. So I configure using the -x-include=etc... and x-libraries= but then it gives me an error saying that it can't find libExt or something. The general consensus when this question has been asked has been that it has something to do with RedHat and glibc and Xfree86 but that's all anyone ever says and no one has offered practical advice.

2. When I install RPMs, I am getting this error:

[root@localhost huh]# rpm -ivh libast-0.5-1.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
libImlib2.so.1 is needed by libast-0.5-1

(This actually a special library I needed to install for another program that gave a similar error)

So I came here and it looked like the way to go was to get apt-get. I did so and installed it. The following errors:

[root@localhost huh]# apt-get install libast-0.5-1.i386.rpm
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package libast-0.5-1.i386.rpm

(I have tried it without .rpm on the end as well)

I can not find much extensive documentation on apt-get or how to use it so I am turning to you. Please help because this is about the last straw with me and Linux and if I can't start installing programs, I'm going to just take it off the system.

I realized I made an error in trying to apt-get the package like that but I ran something simple like xine just like the example on the site shows and then this error:

[root@localhost root]# apt-get install xine
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package xine

since you just installed apt-get did you type this first before doing anything?:
apt-get update

actually nevermind...i am not thinking...you wouldn't of got to the point of reading package lists and all that if you didn't....forget what i said.
your probably just going to have to add some more repositories to your list...
and if you want the gui type
apt-get install synaptic then you can browse through the available packages

The KDE for RedHat project has a good description of how to set up your sources.list file. (http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/) Then run:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade (optional to upgrade all upgradable software)
apt-get install packagename (to install package)

You can also do apt-get install synaptic. Synaptic is a program that allows you to do all the software installation/removal from a graphical interface.

Ok thank you for solving one of my problems. The apt-get update was definitely the trick. Now the first one is the harder though, here is another example of not finding correct X libraries or something:

I tried to install aterm, and when I did ./configure this was the result (long, but look for the lines that say it is trying to find X libraries and it says no)

[root@localhost aterm-0.4.2]# ./configure
loading cache ./config.cache
configuring for aterm 0.4.2
checking for gcc... (cached) gcc
checking whether the C compiler (gcc -O ) works... yes
checking whether the C compiler (gcc -O ) is a cross-compiler... no
checking whether we are using GNU C... (cached) yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking how to run the C preprocessor... (cached) gcc -E
checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached) /usr/bin/install -c
checking for mv... (cached) /bin/mv
checking for rm... (cached) /bin/rm
checking for cp... (cached) /bin/cp
checking for sed... (cached) /bin/sed
checking for AIX... no
checking for POSIXized ISC... no
checking for X... (cached) no
checking for libXpm... (cached) no
You need the libXpm v 3.4k or later, in order to use XPM support in aterm
checking for libjpeg... (cached) no
checking for libpng... (cached) no
checking for AfterStep libraries... (cached) no
checking for sys/wait.h that is POSIX.1 compatible... (cached) yes
checking for assert.h... (cached) yes
checking for fcntl.h... (cached) yes
checking for grp.h... (cached) yes
checking for libc.h... (cached) no
checking for lastlog.h... (cached) yes
checking for stdarg.h... (cached) yes
checking for stdlib.h... (cached) yes
checking for string.h... (cached) yes
checking for termios.h... (cached) yes
checking for unistd.h... (cached) yes
checking for utmpx.h... (cached) yes
checking for sys/byteorder.h... (cached) no
checking for sys/ioctl.h... (cached) yes
checking for sys/select.h... (cached) yes
checking for sys/sockio.h... (cached) no
checking for sys/time.h... (cached) yes
checking whether time.h and sys/time.h may both be included... (cached) yes
checking for getpt... (cached) yes
checking for working const... (cached) yes
checking for inline... (cached) inline
checking for ANSI C header files... (cached) yes
checking for mode_t... (cached) yes
checking for pid_t... (cached) yes
checking for uid_t in sys/types.h... (cached) yes
checking size of char... (cached) 1
checking size of short... (cached) 2
checking size of int... (cached) 4
checking size of long... (cached) 4
checking size of int *... (cached) 4
checking return type of signal handlers... (cached) void
checking for atexit... (cached) yes
checking for unsetenv... (cached) yes
checking for setutent... (cached) yes
checking for seteuid... (cached) yes
checking for host in utmp struct... (cached) yes
checking where utmp is located... (cached) /var/run/utmp
checking where wtmp is located... (cached) /var/log/wtmp
checking where ttys/ttytab is located...
checking for working Xlocale... (cached) no
checking for working setlocale... (cached) no
creating ./config.status
creating autoconf/Make.common
creating Makefile
creating doc/Makefile
creating src/Makefile
creating src/graphics/Makefile
creating scripts/random_colors
creating config.h
config.h is unchanged
Configuration:

Aterm version: 0.4.2 : 06 September 01
Source code location: .
Install path: /usr/local/bin
Compiler: gcc
Compiler flags: -O
without any AfterStep integration.

Transparency : enabled
Off focus fading : disabled

malloc support: system default

The following are set in config.h

utmp support: disabled

Type of 16bit: short
32bit: int
pointer: (same as) int

*** Please check src/feature.h for further options ***

I see no error messages from your ./configure. run now make && make install. You shall read the README file first...