Is it me or is installing software in Linux far more complicated than it needs to be?

Everytime I try and do something I don't have the right library or something. For instance I'm trying to compile alloy theme, I need automake 1.6, for that I need...I've forgotten and to be honest I am moving beyond caring and it's a shame!

I'm currently configuring urpmi and dunno what it does, I think it searches all the servers for the libs I need when i tell it. But what's the point of that? I thought the thing everyone loves about linux is that you can do it your way and learn as you go along...how does urpmi fit with that? That's just windows update! Why are the libs and dependancy information scattered to the four winds across the internet? Why are the install instructions at kde-look so vague? It baffles me! It could all be so easy!

You want to install alloy on Man 9.1 and KDE 3.1, ah, you'll need this, this and this from here and here... sounds good to me!

And don't tell me i don't use google enough or something, the names of the libraries and their status varies constantly and you can't find shit in google without knowing the name of what your looking for!

Hmmmm urpmi is downloading 17 megs of something....I only have a 56k modem, can i afford to wait for that... i don't think so, think i'll quit that and try something

oh, hang on, i think something useful is happening...light is dawning...i just installed automake using the urpmi command and i think it did all the automake dependancies too...it did. ok, am starting to see the value...i'll try and compile alloy again...

it's worked. i have installed the alloy style and win decorations...damn...thought i had a really good case for a moan there...foiled again...

I'm afraid I'm having the same problems. I recently read about kpackage, a gui methot of managing packages. I don't appear to have kpackage but I read somewhere that it is part of kdeadmin, which I have (red hat 9). So I downloaded it and tried rpm -Uvh kpackage etc etc (I don't remember the version numbers etc) and it halted with about 3 dependancies. I wouldn't know where to get them so I'm still scratching my head about installing packages!
g.

I believe that Mandrake has a big library of software that can be installed directly from the Mandrake Control Centre (but I'm not sure, I don't use Mandrake...)

Hope that helps.

yeah, i think mandrake has a lot of software from the control center and i am pretty sure that urpmi works similar to apt-get. there are urpmi repositpries that it goes out and hits to grab the software that you want to install. as for the dependency problems, i ran mandrake for a short while and also had a lot of problems installing software, i don't really know whats up with that, but if it is just failed dependencies then you could go to a site like http://rpm.pbone.net, or many like it and search for software for your distribution to fill those dependencies.