Baslinux mailing list

[ichi AT aggies.org]

sindi keesan wrote:
> 
> But one of my reasons for learning Linux is to be able to 
> run Opera and it seems to need the new library, 

What makes you say that?  Opera is not working for me 
and I speculated (wondering out loud) whether it could 
be a library problem.  There are a hundred other things 
(non-library-related) that could be causing the problem.
Someday I'll figure it out, but it's way too early to
rush off and install a big new library.

> as do quite a few other precompiled programs.  

Which?  If you want to run the very latest version, then
yes you may need glibc 2.3 for some.  However, if you go
back a year or two, you will usually find an earlier version
that works just fine with 2.1.

> I put someone to the trouble of installing Slackware 7.1 
> from CD with the old library so that someone else could 
> compile Kermit 

I'm sure that older Kermit binaries are available that work 
with glibc 2.1.  Kermit has been around for ages.  Or, instead 
of "putting people to the trouble" of making binaries for you, 
you could simply compile your own binary from the source code.

> A newer library would also let me use programs from later 
> versions of Slackware, such as a Lynx later than 2.3.

If you want to use the latest version of Kermit and the latest
version of Lynx and the latest version of everything else, then
you have two options:
(1) learn how to compile from source and make your own binaries,
kernels, etc.  -or-
(2)  use an up-to-date, "user-friendly" distribution that 
provides pre-compiled packages for everything you want.

Cheers,
Steven