Uninstalling svgalib

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Awhile ago someone asked whether Linux would be more reliable in
uninstalling stuff than Windows. I stuck my foot in it by saying that
since uninstalls were programs of some sort (Makefiles etc) they were
all subject to bugs. The knowledgeable on this list disagreed
strenuously. It was explained (in terms I couldn't understand at the
time and probably still can't) that Linux was more reliable by design
and that uninstalling items was foolproof, so I was wrong and Linux was
unquestionably superior.

Well...

Apparently the foolproof designers failed to consider the ingenuity of a
complete fool...

Using Redhat 8 I'd like to get a bigger screen than 80x25. I came across
the resizecons utility and through it a reference to svgalib. rpm shows
that this is not installed, so I downloaded and installed it. 

I could never get anything to work; everything kept blowing up looking
for libraries. savetextmode, for example, wouldn't load because it
couldn't find vgalib.so.1. It turned out there was a file in
/usr/local/lib named vgalib.so.1.4.3 (the version number of svgalib) and
a link in the same directory named vgalib.so. I created another link by
the required name, but I couldn't get the program to find it even when I
added /usr/local/lib to PATH and even when I CD'd to that directory and
added . to the path.

So, I did a make uninstall. Noting that I still had a bunch of man pages
I did a make clean and a makewhatis. I've still got (at least some of)
the man pages. Doing an apropos svgalib gives tons of stuff, some of it
referring to the stuff I just uninstalled (such as fix132x43). On
Windows I could have just deleted the folder containing all the svgalib
ingredients and lived with a spurious entry in the Add/Remove Programs
folder, but on Linux I've got stuff scattered over at least six man
directories and that doesn't count any utilities or libraries that might
be floating around.

So much for that perfect system! And I've still got my midget 80x25
screen!

Since I didn't do an apropos svgalib before starting this agony I might
be seeing the pre-svgalib results without knowing it; I'll have to check
at home.

I truly look forward to the flames this is likely to generate as I hope
to find out what the heck I did wrong! 

TIA,

Lee



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