[techtalk] Library standardization?

[Beverly Guillermo]

> A real newbie question :)
>
> Is there any form of library standardization in progress? Seems like
> every time I try to install something new, I get some kind of library
> conflict. Either I don't have the standard library it needs, or the
> development one, or something else. Tonight it took almost three hours
> to acquire and install libraries for KICQ (the ICQ clone written for
> KDE) using RH 6.0. One of the major problems was the need for two
> different forms of JPEG libraries, written by two different groups. It
> was very frustrating, and I ended up having to compile the source on my
> own computer, instead of installing the RPM.

Linux is ever evolving, it's never gonna have an idea of standard "standard"
library. =)

> Sooo... :)
> Has there been any thought to making sense of the kazillions of
> libraries? Maybe putting some of the features together into larger
> libraries, or releasing the standard and development ones together? I
> know this probably sounds really simplistic, but I don't know my apples
> from my oranges yet :P

I recommend running Debian because of the package manager.  It makes
it simple to upgrade packages.  However, if you want to know more about
it, installing the packages in the tarball format and trying to keep up is
excellent (and frustating =) experience.

Beverly


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