mc in fedora 10

[MK]

On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:21:25 +0100
"Yury V. Zaytsev" <yury at shurup.com> wrote:

> The way modern distros work is different from what it used to look like
> [...]
>
> Once the system is installed you are expected to use its package
> management facilities to pull anything else you might need from the
> Internet. Essentially, past this point you are expected to forget about
> the DVDs at all. [...]
> Frankly, I can't understand how come people can't spend an hour to look
> through the intro on how you are supposed to use a distribution to waste
> days on recompiling packages from older source archives...

I understand that!  However, I would not call 8gb "just enough packages to get a minimal self-sustainable working system".  I have been using linux since the late 1990's, I am a programmer, and I am sure I still do not even have HALF of what is on those 2 DVD's installed.  Some of the packages are IMO quite obscure and totally unnecessary to any "basic installation" *regardless of hardware, etc* -- but mc is still not among them.  Eg, there is a ton of development libraries, which are great for development, but they CANNOT be necessary for anything else.  In other words, that DVD set is intended on some level to be a "complete" repository.  Not everyone in the world has a high speed connection, after all, and in some circumstances installations may be done where there is NO connection.

However I will also admit that at that point I was still strictly an "rpm" command user (I was travelling the world, sans computer, c. 2003-2008) -- search for rpm, download rpm, install rpm (one of the things I appreciate much about mc is it's ability to open the .cpio package for viewing).  My impression at that time was that the online redhat database had taken a definate turn for the worse in terms of functionality/user-friendliness, I suppose because the use of yum over the net had come to replace the web frontend.
 
Basically, my point is that most linux users do not use mc and it occupies an obscure place in most major distros.  Vis. "waste days on recompiling packages from older source archives" -- no, I just find the homepage, download the source tarball, and compile it according to my preferences.  I do not have a hard time determining and accounting for prereqs.  IMO most linux users would benefit if they got a little more comfortable with the "build" process, but that is a contentious position.

And thanks again for mc, I can't say that enough.  It's my #1 recommendation to linux newbies.

-- 
MK <halfcountplus at intergate.com>
C/perl programmer