Ian,
> You can get into an RPM if you have a working cygwin installation,
though. For example, with cygwin you should be able to build alien,
and you can use that to convert an RPM into a file which you can read
using tar. I expect there are other ways as well. alien can be found
here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/alien/
I didn't know about alien. That is a great tip, thanks! I have downloaded
it. I did a search for RPM conversion tools, but didn't find this one.
> You don't need collect2, though, unless you are building C++ code with
the -frepo option. Moreover, if you have a cygwin installation, you
can build collect2. The message you reference only refers to mingw,
which is a minimal GNU tools implementation for Windows. cygwin is
nearly complete Unix emulation for Windows, and is able to build
collect2 just fine.
Okay, I'm going to go back and reinstall cygwin, this time with gcc (which I
missed the first time around).
I did find a very quick and easy way to get Linux running. I'm now running
Knoppix 3.3 off a live CD (knoppix.net). It was a big download, but I have a
very fast broadband connection. I burned it to CD, changed my BIOS to boot
from CD, and voila! It's up. Simple, easy, and painless. It's kind of a
thrill, actually, to see it. (I'm easily amused.)
I'll explore both approaches--native compiling using Knoppix, and creating a
cross compiler with cygwin. If I grow to really like Knoppix, I'll install a
Redhat as a second OS on my hard disk. I haven't played with Knoppix at all
yet--just booted a minute ago--but the headers must be on the CD somewhere.
- Sheryl
