Will GnuCash ever work for me?

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 01:11:45PM -0400, Jim Biddle wrote:
> I am using mandrake 8.0 with kde or, mostly, ximian with gnome.  Ximian
> helps with updates if they are in their channels.  Kde has appfinder which
> seems to do me no good at all.  I usually find things by using a bit of 20
> year old dos experience.  I will admit that I am getting better if I install
> them, but when they are installed along with mandrake or ximian I don't
> alway know what is installed.  Nothing seems to to voluntary put an icon on
> the desktop which is one way programs and tagalongs are often found in
> windows.

I echo Paul's sentiment:

> > In a message dated: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 06:06:37 EDT
> > "Jim Biddle" said:
> >
> > >One weakness for me with linux is that I am not sure what I have
> > >and even when I install something I have trouble finding it.
> >
> > That's not a weakness of Linux, it's a lack of understanding on your
> > part of how to use the package management system that comes with your
> > distribution of choice.

Your problem seems to be that you haven't learned how to use your
package manager.  Like Red Hat, Mandrake uses RPM.  There are various
GUI frontends that make this "easier" for some people, but I
personally find that the command-line interface is by far the easiest
way to use it.

For example, to see a list of packages you have installed, use this:

  $ rpm -qa |less

(piped to less, because the number of packages you have installed will
certainly not fit on one screen).  Also, if you want to see what
version of a package you have, say the GNU file utils package, use
this:

  $ rpm -q fileutils
  fileutils-4.0-21

If you know you have a package installed, but you're not sure exactly
what it's called, you can use this in conjunction with other standard
Unix tools to help you find out what you're looking for.  For example,
if I want to know all of the packages I have installed which relate to
XFree86, I'll use this:

  $ rpm -qa |grep -i xfree86
  XFree86-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-libs-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-xfs-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-75dpi-fonts-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-ISO8859-2-1.0-9
  XFree86-ISO8859-7-1.0-4
  XFree86-Mach64-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-SVGA-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-VGA16-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-XF86Setup-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-cyrillic-fonts-3.3.6-20
  XFree86-devel-3.3.6-20

If you want to know what package a particular file belongs to, you can
use this:

  $ rpm -qf /bin/ipcalc
  initscripts-5.00-1


> Even using the package management of kde leaves me a bit overwhelmed and
> doesn't seem to tell me where things are- maybe I just need to get used to
> the esoteria.

Read the man page for RPM.  You might also try any printed
documentation that comes with Mandrake; Red Hat has a nice
introduction to RPM for beginners, but I can't say whether Mandrake
does or does not, since I haven't ever used it.

  $ man rpm

Hope that helps.


BTW, none of this is likely to help you install the latest versions of
GnuCash, since the answer there seems to be "install the latest Ximian
on top of the latest release of your distribution, and then maybe go
get these few other packages, depending..."  From what I've heard on
this list, if you don't want to run the latest Ximian on top of the
latest version of your distro, or can't for some reason (like me),
you're basically screwed.  You'll apparently have to get an older
version of GnuCash, or stick with Quicken or the like on M$.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------
Derek Martin          |   Unix/Linux geek
ddm@pizzashack.org    |   GnuPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu