Yesterday, I deleted a bunch of packages that I thought I didn't need, and one of them was aparently the window manager that Dropline GNOME uses. Now, when GNOME starts up, I have to manually place the panels and the desktop onto the screen. All of my windows now have ugly green title bars and are not resizable. Does anybody know what package I need to install to get my desktop working correctly again. I don't want to have to use KDE forever!

Nevermind, I got it fixed by running the Dropline update program. Somehow, I let myself get rid of metacity. Sometimes I feel like Linux trusts me too much, it should know that I'm a complete fool and say "stop! what are you doing, idiot!" :P

that would be M$ W!ndow$

If you like to keep control of your system, run as far away as you can every time someone whispers 'swaret' OR 'dropline'.

LMAO, I'm glad Pat V. took that swaret garbage out of Slack 10, it caused more problems
than it solved!!

I agree. I mean it's a good idea, especially for dependency checking when you install a new package. But the whole philosophy of upgrade aeems to have become a sickness. Personally. I' glad to not really need alll those updates. the other day I bought a PC Magazine (or some other), with an 'update' CD for winXP and win2K, with 17,000 security patches! Maybe the 'swaret boys' are just missing that crappy M$ that needs all that fixing. Most users don't currently don't NEED any more security than just RUN LINUX. if they need a bit more, then use iptables. The updates to php and apache, and other such progs, of course is important for many users, but most, no.
the thing is that the linux world is still populated with mostly gurus and would-be gurus, and we LIKE mesing stuff and having to fix it. That's why there are so many good linux minds caught on the update merry-go-round.
On the other hand, i'm always whinig about swaret- maybe I should join the project and Do something about it...

If the software packages don't need to be updated, as you say, then why are the updates released? If all software were perfect at the time of its initial release we'd still be running Mac OS 1, or Windows 1, or Slackware 1 with the original Linux kernel, oh wait, Linux wouldn't have been developed because Linus looked at Minix and realized it was perfect. Maybe programming COBOL with paper cards wasn't so bad after all.

My point is, there is always room for improvement. If you create something, whether it's an application, or a car, or a loaf of bread, you're always looking for ways to make it better.

Kent

Seems to me it would benefit all users if there could be a standardized means of "grading" upgrades and updates, such as a range from "Really Essential" to "Trivial." The really essential ones would be those that fix a serious security problem or prevent some awful interaction with widely used software; the trivial at the other end of the scale would be those that are only minor cosmetic changes, etc.

That way, most users could only go after the "Really Essential" or "Highly Recommended" variety of changes.

Slackware does this, the main stable release is only changed if its security/bug related. everything else comes in the next release or -current.