Hello all!

I've been having some trouble using gcc 4.01 with an out of the box suse 10.0 oss full package install!

Whilst trying to compile a simple - Hello world program i got an error saying stdio.h coldn't be found!

From reading other posts I found out that gcc is configured to look for include files in /usr/lib and I problably need some version of libc but suse is supposed to come with this!

I Have tried gcc -v hello.c to find out where is it looking for .h files but i don't know which variable I should watch out for or even where to change the gcc as I don't know which is the configuration file!

Would I have to recompile gcc? Could I possibly just copy some library into the /usr/lib/ dir? This very same problem existed with suse 9.3! Is there a distro where I will not find this problem?

You shouldn't have to do this with a right-out-of-the-box install, but have you tried "gcc -I/path/to/include/dir hello.c"? That explicitly adds whatever your include directory is (usually /usr/include; could also be /usr/local/include) to the search path in GCC's preprocessor. Like I said, it shouldn't be an issue, but this will help show if there's some larger problem at play here.

Tried gcc -l /usr/include and /usr/local/include with no results! gcc -v gives those dirs and an extra one as a search path list anyway! I suppose it must be something else, maybe the library itself! Think I should have mentionned the distro isn't out of the box but out of the magazine (LXF74)! Suppose that could be an issue! I decided to try Fedora and that worked just fine. Shame it is so damn ugly! Would you recommend gentoo, slackware or freebsd? Everyone says they are the best! Gentoo is prooving difficult and kde config on bsd6 didn't go smoothly either! Cheers anyway taylor!

I've not tried Gentoo before, so I can't really say anything about it. But I would definitely recommend Slackware from what I understand of your needs.

By default, it comes with gcc 3.3.6, but I believe a 4.x package is supplied as an alternate. Or it shouldn't be any problem to simply compile the new version yourself; it worked for me, anyway. Furthermore, the default install supports almost all (if not all) of the gcc languages including Ada, Fortran, and Objective C. Slackware also features KDE for your desktop, and generally provides a simple, powerful, and stable environment, even by Linux's high standards.

FreeBSD is also a superb operating system (in fact, I like it even more than Linux; but it lacks good support for certain software). It comes by default with gcc 3.4.4, but you can certainly install other versions as well. The default, I believe, must be kept around for system upgrades because of compatibility. As far as KDE on FreeBSD goes, I don't know much about it (I'm a WindowMaker guy), except that it has it's own project page: http://freebsd.kde.org/

I'd give Slackware a shot, if you haven't done so yet. In any case, with enough searching you're sure to find a distro that perfectly suits your needs!

I will give slackware a try! I've already installed it a while without trouble! Yet the ports funcionality od freebsd sounds quite appealing! How did u configure window maker after the install?

Configuring WindowMaker is a snap. To set up your .xinitrc file, just run wmaker.inst (usually in either /usr/bin or /usr/X11R6/bin). If it asks what type of configuration type you want to use, pick the one that can be configured from the GUI; I believe wmaker.inst refers to it as a "binary" format or something, I think it's the default choice. Then startx, of course. After WindowMaker has started, you should see the WindowMaker "dock" (like the Mac OS X dock) on the right hand side; the one right below the top one is for config. Double-click it to launch the configuration tool. Alternatively, select "Preferences Utility" from the root menu (right-click on the desktop), or run /usr/lib/GNUstep/Applications/WPrefs.app/WPrefs. This utility has pretty much all of the configuration you can do with WindowMaker.