X is giving me a headache.
In advance, forgive the fact that you probably answer these questions a few
times a month, but I'm yet another new Linux user swamped in X - and I'm
sinking fast. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder why I'm bothering. Oh yeah, I
detest Microsoft/Windows - that's it. It's disheartening, I'm usually pretty
good with new operating systems, but...
X is totally confusing me at the moment. Or rather, how to get it all
working, where are the good window managers, etc.
I've about given up on KDE. I have read a lot about KDE and how good it was;
how many "great product" awards it is receiving, and wanted to install it as
my WM. However, as you know, there aren't any .deb files for the 1.0 release.
(Why are there 1.0 releases [and .deb files] for bo but not hamm? Wasn't bo
under the same license hamm is under??)
I don't want prerelease (v1.1) software at this point (because of
instability), and the .deb files I can find are for bo - and they want old
versions of libraries that are giving me conflicts with what I have already
installed. Is it worth it to just pull out my new libraries to get the bo
version installed so I can turn around and upgrade again when the hamm release
finally comes back? Will bo versions run on a hamm box?
(By the way, if you're keeping the .deb files for v1.0 of KDE on your site,
would you please e-mail me privately so I can grab a copy? I've scanned the
archives over for the last two hours as requested by another list member, but
I can't find any reference to them.)
Then, I thought I'd take a stab at compiling the source code for KDE. BIG
mistake. Evidently, I don't have all the X includes it needs, and damned if
it'll tell me what they are - it (./configure) just says they aren't there. I
started to just grab them from the XFree86 site, but I'm not sure what to get,
or if I really need all 140M worth of X11 source just to compile KDE.
So, I thought I'd try Window Maker, since I've seen references to it here and
there in this list. Well, I'm in just about the same boat - no binaries on
the Window Maker site, and the source compile instructions say I need the X
includes. Hurumphf...
I did check ftp.debian.org for the Window Maker files, and of course, they are
for version 0.14 - even though the new version is 0.20.
Maybe I'm expecting too much. All I'm after is a good windowing system for my
new Linux. One that I'm not going to have to reboot to fix all the time - I
have Win95 for that. One that provides the features I should expect from a
window GUI - scrollbars, flexibility, ease of use, compatibility, maybe some
pretty backgrounds and title bars - and a clean looking interface.
Should I just shut up and download the old versions of the window managers
from the ftp.debian.org site? Or is there a way to get up to date versions
without having to download the source files to things I don't really need -
like X11 - the binaries are just fine, thanks. Can I just get the include
files for X, will that placate the compiles for KDE or Window Maker?
I wont even go into the errors I'm getting from startx - connect error 11 and
connect error 2 - I'll try to figure those out on my own before I come here
for help. But at this point, I'm beginning to think that console mode is my
best bet for a while.
Comments, assistance, and tranquilizers will be greatly appreciated.
-Jay
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