Vakkotaur

( After the install. )

Recently xchat 2.6.0 was released. I waited a few days, mainly as I forgot about it, but finally had enough with xchat 2.4.x crashing on DCC send and sometimes on receive as well. There is a Fedora Core package, and source is available as well. There are links to other sites that have packages for other distributions.

The site for the Mandrake, well Mandriva now package, only has stuff for the most recent release. Nothing for those who are not keeping up with the bleeding edge. So it looked like compiling was what was needed. The instructions were simple... the actions, not so much. A consistent failure from GTK+ not being found, then not being new enough. Chances are upgrading GTK+ will cause a "dependency cascade"... and so that is where I stopped.

Looking through xchat's forums, someone made a Slackware package and I installed that on caspian where it's been running for several hours. And unlike 2.4.x it can DCC even after several hours of uptime. On another page I found suggestion of how to install a Slackware package on a non-Slackware system. It only almost works, dagnabbit. The bad part of that is that I then lost the working (though buggy) xchat. Removing it and re-installing older version ran smack into more dependency problems. It's starting to remind me of Windows and that should not be happening. Meanwhile I'm discovering just how screwy KSirc is. It's a backup, not a primary program by any means.

I resumed my search for a Mandrake package of xchat 2.6.0 and I actually found one. But it came with its own dependency cascade. It didn't look too bad, only two packages needed, but the first needed something else. That something I can find a reference to, but the site is, hopefully only temporarily, inaccessible. I haven't even bothered trying to get the second of the listed packages needed.

This is quite annoying. Everything else has been working fine for a while now and I finally have Mandrake 10.1 and my preferred programs working right, save for xchat. It should be a matter of upgrading a single package and Just Working. But instead it's this nuisance.

The Ultima (Slackware) system Just Worked. But Slackware's package management is... minimal. Yet RPM seems to not quite enough. I've caught myself pondering Slackware (as it seems to just work), Gentoo, and FreeBSD (as each has a package management system that handles dependencies). I've thought a bit about Fedora, and I'm not sure if I'd really gain anything by going that route. I should not need to switch distributions just to get one program to work right, or at all. Though I have been thinking about moving away from Mandrake, I'd rather it happen on my terms.

A lot of travel, but still good. Thursday afternoon we (jmaynard and I) started off, and hit the Twin Cities during the anything but a rush hour. Rather than wait in the car in traffic, we waited at Lindey's and had some great steak. Then back on the road. XM's old time radio channel again was good to have.

Friday was a bit of shopping (I got - and spent - part of birthday present early). The trip to the shoe store went well. Hard to argue with steel-toed leather Oxfords for $10. And then it was dinner time with the usual excess that holiday meals always seem to be. Visited some with my grandmothers. One of them will be ninety this Wednesday.

Saturday was the trip back, by way of the Minnesota Repeater Council meeting. A couple things threatened to take far longer than they needed to, but finally were taken care of. I doubt the issues have gone away, but the compromise should hopefully mean things won't run quite as hot as they had been before. Got home not too late, but didn't do very much. Just as well.

Sunday was a pleasantly slow day of recovery. I did, eventually, manage to work on the COLT again and finished up Looney Tunes #10 from January 1995. Hopefully I can get through, or at least well into, #72 (Jan. '01) this week. Then there won't be any completely empty years - just gaps.

Last night I did ask kinkyturtle to do for #100 what he did for Animaniacs #25 as the cover has (almost?) every Looney Tunes character on it. Excluding the odd one-shots, of course. I think. I doubt I'll be able get to #100 all that soon, though. Next week would be probably be the earliest. And I'm wondering if I can keep up the one issue per week rate. That would get me caught up on three old issues per month, while not falling behind on new issues. But I'd need to keep that up for 14 months.

And now, a somewhat delayed rant: ( xchat color rant/how-to )