etc alternatives craziness

[Ray Leventhal]

Roger wrote:
> OP,
> 
> I completely encourage you to give it a try at other distributions (If
> you have not done so). I have done it myself (Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu,
> Mandrake). At the end of the day
> you will realise that there are always annoyances to all of them. You
> have to decide what things you are ok with and what things you cannot
> tolerate.
> 


To further Roger's point:

@OP:  Ubuntu, like many others, is a (here's the important part, so read 
carefully) package based system.

I'll say it again just to be clear.  Its a package based system.

When you run *any* packaged based system (Ubuntu, Debian, RH, CentOS, 
etc...) you need to stay with packages for installations wherever 
possible.  Why?  Because things tend to break when you don't, as you've 
seen.

I understand your desire to work with newer versions of things than are 
in the repositories.  That being said, try Slackware, Gentoo or others 
which rely on an administrator's ability to build from source.

Then again, as all this is open source, you can feel free to build a 
system all by yourself and have exactly what you want...though making it 
all work together is more of a PITA if you ask me.

In a nutshell, when you violate a package based system's management of 
installed packages and it breaks, you get to keep the pieces.

Just my .02

-R

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