Some thoughts about yum and repositories

[Beartooth]

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:41:17 -0400, William Hooper wrote:

> Now you've hit the problem.  Too many people are convinced that there is
> some magic in the yum.conf instead of actually trying to understand it. 
> I cringe every time I see someone pointed to a FAQ to get a yum.conf
> rather than told how to make their own changes.

Make that one of the problems, or part of the problem. Some of us would
rather run anything than MegaScat, and find linux (especially RedHat &
Fedora) somewhat less unapproachable than other distributions -- but can't
begin to follow such explanations as we commonly find, even if we're at
least mildly interested. (Several of my friends and correspondents refuse
even to try linux, despite their dissatisfaction with Windows, because
they see indications of the time & effort I put into it.)

Even such as we do notice that running yum is easier than up2date (or,
afaict, apt). But without being able to read (let alone write) code, we
can at least use a yum.conf if we can copy or download it.
	
> The beauty of yum is that it uses standard protocols so you can easily
> look at the repos with your web browser and test to your hearts content
> with something like wget.

What are repos, and why do you look at them? What would you test??

I did use wget once -- with someone walking me through, step by step. I
don't have the kind of mind that can recall the details, nor even where to
look for them. I remember that it did a great swath of downloading all at
once, instead of laboriously one rpm after another ... But even though I
know enough to look at man wget, the result is the usual: I'm lost before
I get very far. And this is still happening after years of linux.

-- 
Beartooth Autodidact, curmudgeonly codger learning linux
Remember I know precious little of what I'm talking about!