[PD] RE: [OT] migrating to linux

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Matthew Allen hat gesagt: // Matthew Allen wrote:

> Once again why I'm going the 'more difficult' route. I installed RH 9.0 and
> it was pretty easy to get things up and running smoothly (which is why I
> keep pointing people to the CCRMA guys). 

CCRMA guy! Guy! One guy! Whose doing a hell of a good job. ;)

> Actually I've been a PERL freak for 7 years and have been using python now
> for 3. Scripting is not an issue. I'm still getting comfortable with shell
> scripting and usually just write a quick perl script for stuff, but I would
> like to move over to mostly shell based scripts as soon as I can. 

Don't do that. Bash is hell (a lot of hell going on in this mail, no
offending intended).

Stay with Python, it can do it all, even more. 

> > * figure out the package management system of your distribution (if
> >   applicable), become familiar with the GNU build system and start
> >   making your own (packages not management system that is)
> 
> BAM! Apt-* is awesome and easy to use, and of course easy to break a bunch
> of stuff with if you don't read the docs and just jump in head first. So
> this week has been earmarked as 'Learn all you can about Apt-' week. 

This is a *very* important point. Be it rpm, ebuild or deb, you just
have to get comfortable with your distribution's package management
and with how things are configured on Linux in general. 

Also getting in contact with other, more experienced Linux users (or
even not that much more experienced, but people, who have "gone
through it" recently, is very important. Join debian-user or similar
lists, and join linux-audio-user.

The special problem with Debian is, that "stable" already is quite old
again, so be prepared to upgrade the system to "testing" soon, and
also get comfortable with "apt-get --build source packagename". 

So one possible way would be: Install a stable Debian base system.
Only a minimal set of packages, no X (so X can't break on the upgrade)
and similar, but with net access. Then install and configure aptitude,
configure apt sources with dselect ("Access" methods), then immediatly
quit dselect. Use aptitude to "dist-upgrade" to testing. *Now* you can
install X etc. preferable via "tasks". 

This should work and no be that much work to redo, in case anything
goes to, of course, hell.

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__