I wanted to update my Mepis so I went to the package manager. 100 or so programs showed up saying they needed to be updated. A few errors came up but I ignored them. I thought the package manager would be smart enough to take care of everything. After the update, 2 of my programs (maybe more) were missing. Okay... Sure I should have taken the time to look over those errors more closely, but did it really need to delete some of my programs without me telling it to?

I'm not saying the package manager is a total piece of crap. I think it's one of the most brillant tools in the OS world for installng programs. But wouldn't it be smarter if the package manager downloaded the new program first, THEN uninstalled your old program, and THEN installed the new one. And if it couldn't download your new program, it should move on to the next program on your list and not start deleting stuff?

Portage does that.

One of the problems I can see with the mentality of "just skip it, who cares, it's one file" is versioning dependencies. If a package requires version 2.3 and you have version 1.2 of an application, and it just 'skips' 2.3 for whatever reason, then it cannot install the later package, which may be a dependency of another package...

HTH

Cool

How about the idea of making programs more independent?

Cinematography: do some research, the point of shared libraries (dependies usually) is to share code on disk, and in memory, it also lets the program use code, instead of remaking code, its a necessary

version numbers are usually only important to binary packages, if you don't like it, install from source code, or switch to a distro that uses a package manager that installs from source

Try reading APT HOWTO
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap.../index.en.html

And pay attention to what the messages are.

Hi,

Alot of Mepis users are having issues with programs after using the apt-get update. There is a fix posted on at: http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/newbb/

Hope that helps.

Ahh... I get it now. That's pretty smart, and that's why so much can fit onto a single CD. Good thinking on their part.

I'm dyslexic. Reading too much becomes a major chore. This is why I like nice programs that are self-explanitory and don't require tons of manuals.

My problem wasn't really with Mepis in particular, but with the package manager. All debian based distros, and probably the .rpm ones to, have this problem.

Thanks Jedi.