I managed to sleep in this morning which is a bit of a novelty, with the warm weather of late, and the bright sunshine, I’m usually wide awake far too early.
So there I am all ready for the start of the German Grand Prix, and what happens, power cut. Not funny. Anyhow with the first corner accident and subsequent restart I actually didn’t really miss anything, but it was still plenty annoying.
And so that was most of the afternoon. I spend most of the evening looking at packages that might provide a web interface to the icecast server I got running. And here lies another of the problems with Linux. Dependencies. In my experience with most PC stuff if you download and install the software it will work. Most times it won’t require you to download half a dozen other bits and bobs first. And if it does, it almost always supplies those too.
For example this little proggy I got called "Tunez" requires the following:
MySql
php on a capable webserver (Apache)
DBI module for perl
mysql module for DND
mpg123

Fair enough the first two. But DBI for perl. What? DND?
I think this is where the Linux philosophy and that of the Windows world diverge, again. Ease of use. Making life easier for the end user. I guess it’s all a bit like microwave meals. Windows stuff is prepackaged, shove it in, heat it up, eat it. Linux requires you to buy the ingredients and prepare from scratch. Forget the compile bit, that’s not too hard (if it works. I’ve gotten so used to not having to work when I want programs to work. I install. If they require some special module (Dreamweaver Ultradev requires a special ODBC widget. But at least it tells you exactly where to get it from). Yes, I’m sure if I spent a while looking I might be able to find the above modules. And maybe install them without having to make numerous other upgrades (who said Linux doesn’t suffer from dll hell? They’ve never suffered from libc version hell <g>).
And before anyone says to me "why should Linux be easy?", go get a sanity check. Computers are here to make my life easier, not harder. Yes the tinkering’s fun, sometimes, but why make it mandatory? You want to be a masochist, fine by me, but don’t drag me down with you.
Anyhow I gave up, too tired to fight. I’ll sort it out another day when the heat hasn’t sapped all my will to live.

Posted by Phil on July 29, 2001 12:00 PM | Categories: Misc