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  • From: James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Help for a newbie
  • Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:56:29 -0600

On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 02:26:11PM +0000, sindi keesan wrote:
> >
> > I found the Opera site and I'll download it when I get some time.
> >
> > Opera 9 for Linux is only about 5.5Mb. That's tiny compared with most
> > Windoze stuff!!!!
>
> Please let me know if Opera 9 works with glibc 2.2.5. The one I
> downloaded needed 3.2.3. You need to choose carefully.

I'll do a bit of translation for the inexperienced Linux user here. Linux
updates its
libraries regularly. Libraries are files that programs need to run, and which
can be used by
several programs at the same time. I think they are sometimes called "shared
libraries" and
they are probably similar to what are known as ".dll" files under Win (my
understanding of
libraries is pretty rudimentary: anyone is welcome to offer corrections
and/or
clarifications). BL3 is based on a really old set of libraries. It's
libraries are libc5,
which was current in the late 90's. For this reason, many newer Linux
programs refuse to run
and/or compile under BL3. Long and short of this is that we have to be picky
about what
programs we install under BL3. The add-ons linked to from Steven's site are
all safe, as are
the programs various BL users have compiled and make available at their
download sites.
Stuff from Slackware Version 4 and earlier also usually works fine. Anything
newer is
suspect, though.

I should mention that there is a way people using BL have managed to run
newer programs
though, and that involves upgrading BL's libraries to newer ones. I believe a
few people
(Sindi, Steven?) have upgraded their BL 3 libraries by installing libraries
from Slackware
8.1 (ca. 2002?). On this scenario, one keeps existing BL libraries, but adds
newer ones as
well, thus allowing the running of newer programs that otherwise would not
work on BL3. I
think Sindi is saying above that, even with the newer, Slack 8.1 libraries
installed, she
was unable to run the latest Opera under BL3 (correct me if I'm wrong,
Sindi). Be aware that
adding libraries takes up further disk space, of which you have a limited
quantity.

The upshot of all this is that you likely would not be able to run the latest
Opera under
BL3. Almost certainly you'd have to download an older version of Opera, and
even then you'd
likely need to upgrade your libraries before it would run. Sindi and/or
Steven should be
able to provide more detail on how to do this and which version of Opera to
choose.

Btw, you never told us specs for your machine. Newer versions of Opera
require a bit of
processing and memory umph. I'd say nothing less than about a P2 with 64 MB
of RAM would be
required. Does your system meet those specs?

James




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