running squeak in linux

Dominic Fox dominic.fox1 at ntlworld.com
Thu Jun 5 20:08:47 UTC 2003


Getting Squeak to run on Linux defeated me the first time I tried, although
I wasn't trying very hard. It would be nice to have binaries/RPMs for some
more platforms (I couldn't get any that worked with Mandrake 9.0) - if they
already exist, it would be nice if they were easier to find.

The only problem I had with compiling from source on Mandrake - namely that
you have to know to say "./configure --prefix=/usr" because Mandrake doesn't
really use /usr/local - is one that's easy to sort out if you've had to do
it before with something else, but again it's a pain for newbies as I know
from the first time I had to figure it out.

Getting the image into the right path with the right permissions etc. wasn't
too much of a challenge, but again would have caused me some headaches a
couple of years ago. Yes, I know it's empowering to work these things out
for yourself. But sometimes you want to use the groovy application *now*,
and save the empowerment for later.

This week I got a new machine running XP, and got Squeak installed straight
away from the Windows installer without having to confront any of these
issues *at all*. The fact that it's harder to do on Linux is more a fact
about Linux than it is a fact about Squeak, but it would still be nice if
the install process could be made a bit slicker - the inclusivity of the
Squeak environment is a bit compromised if you still have to find (or
become) an experienced Linux geek to get it installed.

Dominic



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