I have explained myself badly.
I keep the basic distribution stable, but update individual items (such as
KDE) as needed. Over time, things get out of sync (see next paragraph). When
this happens, I go for a major update with a clean reinstallation from a
current distro. An rpm update will overwrite files. This is rarely done 100%
accurately.
I have an old 200 MHz box that I use as an remote X terminal. It uses SuSE
8.0 and runs very satisfactorily as such. I wanted to put some basic
applications on so that it could be used as a stand-alone computer. However,
when I installed Firefox, it would not work because the glibc libraries were
out of date. Trying to updating the glibc libraries caused a raft of broken
dependencies. So I shall probably install a copy of Mandrake 9.2, which
will be far less hassle than trying to update the individual packages.
As a general rule, I do a full reinstall every two years or so - that is not a
very big deal in my view. Most Windows reinstallations are forced - my Linux
reinstallations are planned and done as and when I please. As an aside I run
Windows 98SE as an application using Win4Lin. As an application it is rock
steady - it takes about 15 seconds to start. The Windows installation has
been untouched for years.
I run Mandrake 9.2 - it came with KDE 3.1. I am now running KDE 3.3.1. I
have done about 4 to 5 KDE upgrades over the past 18 months since I installed
Mandrake 9.2.
KDE is so complex, that I find it much better to build the next version as
described and put in its own directory. I then have the choice of the two
versions - and most importantly - the old version remains untouched. The way
I work means that the old version is never overwritten, and remains
available. I used the same technique when I upgraded the qt libraries. To
swap from one to the other, all I needed to do was to change a symlink.
I always expect trouble somewhere when going from KDE 3.x to 3.x+1. The
formats for the files in .kde tend to change, and this can lead to
malfunctions. This is the reason why I recommend having a clean .kde
directory for the new version of KDE. Many times have I encountered problems
with a program and found that on switching user accounts, the problem goes
away, which pinpoints the cause as a fault in the $HOME directory, rather
than a vice in the program itself.
Hope this helps
Basil Fowler
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