installing wxPython on Linux and Windows

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> I have heard praises of Debian's install system but Debian is quite
> conservative with latest versions. There are some packages (e.g. Python,
> PostgreSQL, Subversion) where I'd like to have the latest versions.
> I don't want to be too tightly bound to the update cycles of the
> Linux distribution.

Then you can go for debian testing or (as I do) unstable. They usually have
the latest stuff in, and for a desktop-system that doesn't need uptimes
measured in years its really good. Occasionally, some dependency matters
occur in these releases, and I have to force installation of packages. But
usually, things are smooth, and apart from a hd-crash in January, I never
had to reinstall my system for now 2-3 years. Before that, I used Suse, and
switching between releases did give me quite a few headaches - usually I
reinstalled the system, as my home was on its own partition.

However, a warning has to be voiced: Commercial distributions do a better
job on the hardware detection/integration side of linux-life. Debian can do
what can be done on linux in general, but it might require some
config-file-fiddling and the occasional kernel build. Still worth the
effort for me, though.


> If there would be a common specification how to query and change
> configuration data of the system and applications this would be
> really helpful.

Yup. And above that, tool support for configure or the like that will
integrate this - for example, on debian nearly all libs come with an extra
dev-package you need when compiling against them. No big deal, but
compiling software yourself usually means to downtrack these packages by
making multiple configure runs, until all missing headerfiles are there. 

-- 
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch