New user attempting installation-dependencies

[Robert Locke]

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 09:00, Tom Capehart wrote:
> Dear List,
> 
> I'm a wannabee gnucash user but I am stymied during the installation by the 
> 20 or so dependencies that I am apparently missing.  I have recently 
> installed RH Desktop 3.95 from downloaded cd's.  Can someone help me get 
> past this obstacle?  I've used RH for some time but am not very experienced 
> (as you can see) at installing applications.
> 
> If I can only get gnucash to work I can sever my relationship with Bill 
> Gates once and for all!
> 
> Any help is most appreciated --- thanks in advance.
> 
> Tom

Tom,

I think others will echo likewise.  Your choice of RH Desktop 3.95 is
not a solid choice when it comes to gnuCash.  There is a reason it is
not included in the distribution.

First, I believe 3.95 is actually a beta for RHEL 4, so your mileage is
definitely going to vary.  Using Beta software always entails risks.

Second, gnuCash is a Gnome v1 application.  For whatever reason, Red Hat
has chosen to not include the necessary Gnome v1 libraries and such
needed by gnuCash since the introduction of RHEL v3.  They are entirely
focused on Gnome v2 with a general belief that most applications have
already upgraded their code to Gnome v2 or will shortly.  Unfortunately,
for those of us using gnuCash, the Gnome v2 port seems to still be a
thing for the future (though I wish I was in a position to help it
along....)...

Moral of the story is that some have tried working their way through the
dependency hell, but every time Red Hat releases an update, risk
breaking things.

Now to the alternatives.  If you would like to stick to a Red Hat
oriented distribution with support for gnuCash, you may want to
entertain working with the Fedora Project.  Through at least, Fedora
Core 2 (haven't switched to Core 3 yet), I have been able to run gnuCash
without much of a hitch.  gnuCash comes on that distribution and all
dependencies are resolved....

Your other alternative is to probably move away from Red Hat to one of
the other fine distributions out there.

But, as a newbie, you probably want to avoid much of the headache and
heartache in getting it to work on RHEL....

Good luck,

--Rob