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  • From: Kevin Monceaux <Kevin AT RawFedDogs.net>
  • To: Source Mage Users Mailing List <SM-Users AT Lists.Ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [SM-Users] Possibly A New User - Introduction
  • Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:57:16 -0500

Fellow Source Mage Enthusiasts,

I might be joining the Source Mage community of users. I've been a Linux
user for several years and just discovered the Source Mage distribution last
night.

First, a little bit of my Linux history. I started out with Slackware in
the 1.x kernel days on a 486 with a 100Mb hard drive. Due mainly to my lack
of experience my Slackware box eventually became quite unstable. I'm sure I
upgraded some packages without also upgrading the libraries the packages
were dependent on. Slackware's package management system does no dependency
checking. At some point I gave Mandrake a try. Recently I switched my main
box from Mandrake to Gentoo. I'd been trying out Gentoo on a test box for a
while before that. I've also attempted a couple of Linux From Scratch
builds. For the most part I like Gentoo but there are a few things about it
I don't care for. Recently I was considering giving Slackware another try.
Actually, it was a post about ROCK Linux on a Slackware message board that
lead me to discovering Source Mage Linux.

Anyway, being a D&D/Charmed/Buffy fan there are several things I like about
the Source Mage package management theme. I downloaded the Source Mage
install CD last night and gave it a try. My test box is an old Pentium MMX
200mhz PC with a flaky CD-ROM drive. After several tries and it failing to
boot the install CD I switched to using qemu to test Source Mage. Last I
checked it was still working on the "sorcery rebuild". After installing and
getting the "sorcery rebuild" started under qemu I finally got my test PC to
boot the Source Mage install CD and made it through the install on it. I
didn't have time to go through all the questions "sorcery rebuild" would ask
so I haven't started that process on my test PC yet. I did find one snag on
my test PC that I didn't have under qemu. After the install finished and I
booted Source Mage from the hard drive of my test PC I couldn't view man
pages. When I tried "man sorcery", which worked right after the reboot
under qemu, groff complained about a missing libstdc++ library. I suspect
the "sorcery rebuild" will fix the missing dependencies. I'll get that
started tonight after I get home from work.

Although I've only tinkered briefly with Source Mage there are a few things
I've been pleasantly supprised with.

Is running "sorcery update" followed by "scribe update" the equivelant of
"emerge --sync" on Gentoo? Gentoo's "emerge --sync" takes an overabundant
amount of time, especially the part of the process where it updates the
portage cache. Updating Source Mage is extremely fast in comparison.

It appears that writing a spell for Source Mage is much simpler than
creating an ebuild for Gentoo. It would be tuff to find a distribution that
had all the packages one wants. Gentoo, for example, doesn't have a package
for an xBase compiler, clip(http://www.itk.ru/english/index.shtml), that I
use. After reading up on creating ebuilds I decided that the best approach
would be to enter a bug in Gentoo's bug system requesting that someone with
more ebuild experience create an ebuild for clip. I entered that request
about a year ago. It hasn't been touched yet. Source Mage doesn't have a
spell for clip either but I think I might stand a chance at writing one
myself.

One other build from source distribution that I'm considering, ROCK Linux,
appears to make things even easier. With ROCK Linux creating a package from
source is as simple as:

Go through the usual build steps such as:
./configure
make
etc.

Up to the point where one would run make install. At that point enter:

mkpkg <PackageName> make install

and the software in question is installed under ROCK Linux's package
management system. If it wasn't for the attraction of the sorcery theme of
Source Mage I would probably have taken ROCK Linux for a test drive last
night instead.



Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.




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