[lug] Ethereal - installing problems

[Daniel Webb]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 04:06:57PM -0700, Trent Turner wrote:

> One of my biggest frustrations as a Linux newbie, is installing
> software.

I gave up Redhat because of issues like this, along with dependency
problems.

With Debian, the commands would be:

(to see the files in the package)
dpkg --listfiles package

(to find the package that contains a file that you know should exist *somewhere* in *some*
package)
auto-apt search some_file

I found learning Debian more difficult at the beginning, but much easier
to become proficient.  It's easier to learn the Debian way now thanks to
the Debian Reference project.  If Debian would just add a setting to apt
so that packages can overwrite each others' files by default, I would
have had almost no problems in about the last year of upgrades.

On the other hand, I haven't used Redhat in 4 years, so my opinion could
be very out of date.

Not meaning to start a distro flamewar, it's just that I was having
these kinds of problems back when I was a newbie, someone gave me this
advice, and I'm glad they did.