[GLLUG] Ubuntu Packages

[Marr]

On Saturday 19 January 2008 12:41am, Karl Schuttler wrote:
> if you have a spare computer with hardware space, you could make your
> own package server to stick in your home.

Sounds interesting, thanks for the idea, Karl. But I think I found something 
even better. See below.

On Saturday 19 January 2008 12:09am, Chick Tower wrote:
> One thing you could
> try is to find a cheap (Craig's List?) network card for your laptop,
> configure it, and take it to places that offer free WiFi.

A good idea, indeed, Chick. I've used a local library's free WiFi in the past, 
but it's very slow and only good for some of the things I need. (The laptop 
already has built-in WiFi, modem, and Ethernet. Ironically, my almost 
8-year-old laptop's built-in modem works _far_ better under Linux than this 
not quite 1-year-old laptop.)

But I think I've found the perfect solution:

   http://on-disk.com/product_info.php/manufacturers_id/55/products_id/388

This vendor was found by digging into the main Ubuntu site. That link is to a 
6-DVD set that costs $34.95 and contains all of the current Ubuntu 7.10 
repository. For me, that's the perfect alternative to lack of an in-home 
broadband connection. I can just pop in the appropriate DVD and install 
packages to my heart's content. :^)

I'm just a bit mystified why the whole package management thing (which has 
been around _long_ before Ubuntu ever arrived on the scene, obviously, and 
long before most people had in-home broadband connections) doesn't provide 
something to chase all the dependencies and automatically download a big 
tarball with everything ('*.deb') in one TGZ file. That would make life so 
much simpler. All the pieces are there (i.e. the dependencies are all 
documented), so I'm stumped as to why the solution hasn't been provided 
already, long ago. Or maybe I'm just missing something obvious.

Anyway, thanks for all the help and suggestions, guys -- much appreciated!

Regards,
Bill Marr