On Tue, 2012-08-07 at 16:44 +0200, Roberto Ragusa wrote: > Reinstalling a program on Linux is almost always useless. > If a "rpm -V" comes out clean, you will not get very far > with a reinstall. > > On Windows it usually works because of poor handling of > dependencies and DLL-hell (reinstalling forces your pieces > in place again) and because installation and configuration > are always blended together [reinstall => lose (damaged) settings]. My impression of ye olde windows self destructive tendencies suggested the following: Windows would open system/program files in a write mode, that it should have just opened in read mode. Upon a crash, said file could often be destroyed. Why else would some driver file for your graphics card, sound card, or whatever else, disappear in a crash? The file should have been loaded, long ago, and the file on the disc ignored until the next boot. Post crash, Windows' automatic file system checking seemed to take the action of simply deleting files it couldn't read, no attempt at recovery, nor informing the user of what it's done. Files would mysteriously disappear, and you'd only find out when you/it couldn't load them later on. No other explanations seem to fit why things disappeared, and what happened next. Re-installing on Linux rarely seems to be the answer, since mysteriously disappearing files are rarely the problem, and a reinstall is just going to put the same files onto the drive as you've already got (configuration customisation notwithstanding). You're quite unlikely to accidentally remove a system/program file, because your own files are in a completely different location, and you don't have write/delete permissions for the system/program files (unless you're *STUPID* enough to run as root). If you have failing hardware that caused files to be fouled up (RAM, motherboard, dying hard drive, et cetera), faults are going to recur, and reinstalling is never going to fix that problem. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686 Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
