[Discuss] Firefox with RedHat Fedora

[Murray Strome]

Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> Same (I assume) for Debian unstable.  But most people do not run that
> version of Debian because it is, well, unstable.  There is a well-known
> trade-off between stability and cutting edge.  I assume you have some 
> legitimate reason why you are anxious to get the absolutely latest 
> versions of desktop software, but you should not be
> surprised when you get burnt by such choices. 
I would not like to try to run an unstable distribution or application 
either.  However, I have found over the past few years that the latest 
(stable) versions of GIMP and OpenOffice in particular usually have 
enough new useful features and improvements that make it worth the risk 
and trouble of getting them before they show up in the repositories. 
Also, I have had very few problems with new releases of those particular 
applications --  none with the last 4 or 5 releases of each. I am not so 
sure about the value of doing this for Firefox and Thunderbird -- most 
of their updates seem to be aimed at fixing security issues which are 
most likely only important in Windows, not LINUX.
> Debian unstable, for example, is for expert Debian users who are 
> willing to
> accept (and report on) bugs in order to get access to the 
> latest/greatest. "Universe" is a term used by Ubuntu so it sounds like 
> you were trying to mix Debian and Ubuntu
Actually, that is just my faulty memory at play again.  I guess it was 
"unstable" that I had to use to get a few of the prerequisites for Koha 
in Debian.  The "Universe" was probably what I was trying in order to 
find Koha prerequisites when I was trying to get it to work in Ubuntu.  
It was over a year ago, and except for that project, I haven't used 
Debian or Ubuntu since, except for a few brief experiments.
> Seriously, both Barbara and I try to take good notes whenever we initiate
> any system change on our respective computers.  For example, we 
> capture the
> output of apt-get so we have a record of which packages were installed 
> when.
> So far, over the course of many years I have never had to use that 
> record to
> help straighten out an installation problem, but I just feel it is 
> good to
> have a dated record of when I have installed or removed certain packages.
I try to keep a record, but I am afraid I am not too well organized.  I 
also don't do backups as often as I know I should.  At least this time 
before I started this update, I did back up everything, both to another 
hard drive and also to several DVDs. Luckily, I didn't lose anything in 
the process, so didn't have to fall back on the DVDs but at least I have 
them for WHEN one of my hard drives crashes (I have only had that happen 
once, and that was on the Windows machine).
> I have used the Unix/Linux command line on a daily basis since the 
> late 80's
> so it just seems easy and natural to me.  If you are a touch typist 
> (like I
> am), and you are using a bash shell with all the on-the-fly 
> command-editing
> help there is, then 10 fingers just have a hell of a lot more 
> bandwidth than
> the rodent.  That said, the mouse is definitely nice for cut and paste so
> I always run the command line from many different xterm applications.
I also tend to prefer the command line or keyboard shortcuts as I am a 
touch typist (probably about 100wpm) so it really is faster for a lot of 
things.  When I was working, and especially when I was writing programs 
and/or scripts all the time, certainly I was very familiar with a lot of 
the UNIX commands and various text utilities since I had been using it 
daily since the early 80s -- LINUX was just barely becoming available 
about the time I retired, and for a year after that I couldn't get any 
distribution to work on the computer I had then. Mandrake was the first 
one to work, so that is how I started on the Mandriva track.  However, 
today most of my computer usage is for video editing, photo editing and 
editing newsletters and such. Thus I use a Windows video editor 
(Pinnacle),  and in LINUX, OpenOffice and the GIMP for about 90% of my 
time. Because I pretty well have to use Windows for the video editing, I 
like to have the GIMP and OpenOffice available on it as well, as I often 
use these in conjunction with the video editor. The other 10% is E-mail 
and looking up information on the Net, with a tiny bit every once in a 
while updating the systems and/or applications.  Among other things I 
would like to play with is Lilypond for music typesetting, but haven't 
gotten around to it.  I just don't have any real reason to do command 
line stuff on a daily, or even a weekly basis so naturally, I am very rusty.

In all, I rate my difficulties with LINUX to be pretty minor.  I have 
had to fix/reinstall Windows on my own system a couple of times, and for 
other people fairly often (especially when their machines get clobbered 
by viruses, worms and spyware). Now that really is a pain!!  To install 
or upgrade LINUX is a snap in comparison.

Murray