[Techtalk] "I need to use Windows because ..."

[caitlynmaire at earthlink.net]

Hi, Suzi,

> !!!  Please teach me how to suid a binary!  It would make me so happy
> if it all worked fine...

Miriam did a good job. I should have read ahread in the thread before
writing my last response, I see.  It seems like you are making good
progress.
> 
> On other wants, a little playing today and I have gphoto2 up and
> running thru gimp and gtkam.  :)  yay!  Found out they were on the
> RH7.3 CD, but just hadn't been installed when I upgraded, so
> installing them was trivial. 

Just another dependency issue, I see.  Yeah, this takes some getting
used to coming from Windows (or Mac, or OS/2).  Windows installers tend
to give you everything you need in one neat package.  In theory, that's
great, but in practice they install what they want where they want.  The
net result is that the installer from program x can overwrite the
library from program y (or from Windows itself) with a different
version, and programs y, z, and a all break.  This is DLL hell.  

Linux programmers tend to package just what's unique to their programs
and ask you to get the libraries.  The disadvantage is that you
sometimes need to install 10 things to get your desired program to work.
 Even worse, sometimes the dependent items have their own dependencies. 
The good part of this (which far outweighs the disadvantages, IMHO) is
that if installing program x will break y you are warned in advance. 
Sometimes you'll have to upgrade y to make x work. Other times you can
install two sets of libraries side by side.  In rare cases you have to
make choices.  I personally think any of those three are better than
breaking things on my system without telling me.
   
> I also downloaded and tried abiword and (although the instal 
> wient smoothly, I must be getting the hang of this, installs are going
> 
> smoothly?) 

Cool.

> was again gravely disappointed.  Bar tabs != tables...

Accepted.  Your needs exceed what AbiWord (an admittedly simplistic word
processor) can offer.  OpenOffice is better for you.
> 
> Now - to find scanner software.  

It's called SANE.  (The GUI front end is called xsane.)  It's included
in RedHat 7.x.  There's also a gimp-sane piece that lets you san right
into GIMP, much as you would with Photoshop.

> And I won't hold my breath on turbo tax...  once a year opening 
> the win partition I can deal with.

Yeah, I don't think that will be there anytime soon.

You've said that gnucash isn't good enough for your personal finance
needs.  Have you looked at Kapital?  It's not free, so I haven't, but it
may be worth a peek for you.

All the best,
Caity