[tlug] A greeting, followed promptly by a question, of course.

[ccd <ccd@example.com>]

Greetings, folks. I'm a new member, and one who's actually in Japan. My 
name's Christian, and I'm stationed on NAF Atsugi (Atsugi-Kichi for you 
Nihon-jin types). Enjoy GNU/Linux.  Can't wait for my first meeting.  So 
on and so forth. I'm more of a systems geek than a programmer or 
hardcore sysadmin type, although sysadminning is what I do, for now. On 
NT. So, if I ever start twitching and foaming at the mouth in your 
presence, forgive me. It's the NT talkin'. No formal schooling on 
computers, so please forgive non-technical terminology such as 
"doo-flanger".

Now that I've successfully introduced myself, I'm having a few problems. 
One, mainly, that I'd actually like some help with (I won't bore you 
with my 6+ years of "anti-soundcard-voodoo problems"). LIBS. I think 
they created libs just to put my knickers in a knot. The problem, as I 
understand it, is that my libSDL is looking for some other libs that I, 
as a neglectful user, have forgotten to install. Basically, Christian 
wants to compile a program. Program's ./configure says "Christian needs 
SDL!" Christian gets SDL. Configure says "Christian messed up the SDL 
installation!"... The shell script ./configure, luckily, for one of my 
SDL programs, created a log. Turns out libSDL is looking for another ... 
I'm guessing it's a lib ... thing that is called... Dang. And here's 
where I cease my pursuit on this subject. Turns out a simple "locate" 
uncovered the needed lib, under /opt/kde/lib, nonetheless.

However, since my main gripe *is* with libs, I'm doing a "cp -ur 
/opt/kde/lib* /usr/local/lib", and then again with /opt/gnome/lib... 
Would it be a sound rationalization to believe that a symbolic link in 
place of "/opt/<chosen WM>/lib" to "/usr/local/lib" is a simple 
replacement for all these blasted libs? I can never keep track of where 
they've gone to. That way, all my libs are together, something tries to 
install a new lib, it goes to /usr/local/lib instead of some 
nestled-away GUI hole, causing me uncalled-for grief when I try to 
compile something that wants to use said lib?

Waiting for a professional opinion before I rm these blasted libraries. 
An amateur opinion would do just as well, too

TIA.

Christian Dyer