Is Gnome broken too on NetBSD? 

I've only had KDE2 up and running for just a few days; 
and already I've found two places where that package 
appears seriously broken. Admittedly, I had done "make 
install" myself from source. But the most annoying 
problem (Compose on KMail -> smtp error) is exactly, 
precisely the same problem that thwarted me utterly on 
KDE 1.1.2 installed from binaries off Wasabi Systems 
CDROM's onto NetBSD 1.5 not long ago. I only upgraded to 
NetBSD 1.5.1 and KDE2 in order to escape that glitch. And 
still, here it is again. All my time, then and now, 
trying to get KDE up and running on NetBSD appears to 
have been utterly wasted. Note that I am composing this 
email on my trusty Win98 machine -- because all my NetBSD 
machines are useless for KMail, all producing the same 
smtp error as detailed in prior queries on this very 
mailing list.

I do not care to waste my time like that again. I don't 
have that much time to waste. If it happens to any such 
extent again, I will abandon NetBSD -- and fully document 
the extent of my deep and abiding frustration on the Web. 
It will then be my pleasure to maintain a link in my 
email signatures to that doc for at least a year. I may 
permit my few current NetBSD Newbie How-To's to remain up 
the web (for what they're worth) but will preface each 
with a comment that I have abandoned NetBSD, and why. I 
will also cough up however many dollars it takes to 
submit that page with a commercial link-listing robot. I 
have done it before: once in a dispute with my insurance 
company; again in a difference of interpretation of a 
contract with a roofer -- both to my complete 
satisfaction. 

I will go to that extent only because I feel that the 
advertisements for the package system on NetBSD have 
deliberatly led me into wasting time and effort to that 
degree. I tend to consider a duty on my part to counter 
any and all such false advertisement as has personally 
cost me wasted time, effort or money.

Care to talk me out of that? Then give me a reason why I 
should struggle any further with NetBSD. I want a 
full-featured, graphical desktop. KDE2 looks to be well 
and truly broken on NetBSD. So what about Gnome on 
NetBSD? Who uses Gnome on NetBSD? How broken is Gnome on 
NetBSD? And, given the fact that one of Gnome's 
dependencies for NetBSD has been rolled back to a level 
below that required by the current Gnome package for 
NetBSD, how the hell is anyone supposed to install it? 
even if it isn't half so broken as KDE?

If I can't get a decent GUI up and running on NetBSD 
without a bunch of tedious workarounds, well...then I 
will have learnt what the term "experimental" means 
regarding the NetBSD OS. I will then have to abandon it 
as just another failed "experiment" on my part.

I've got NetBSD installed on four separate machines. One 
more week of this fruitless effort will be all it takes 
to get me to wipe NetBSD completely off one of them and 
put on FreeBSD instead. Then, if that has a decent GUI 
desktop, unbroken, usefull for mail and archiving and 
such...then the other three machines will be very soon to 
follow. If not, then I'll try linux on that machine, with 
like consequences.

If all fails, then I will just resign myself to Win2K, 
which although no really to my tastes, at least lets me 
know before-hand whether something at least CAN be made 
to work how it should. It seems to me at this present 
moment that Microsoft has nothing to fear.

Unhappily,

Gan Starling

--
Mysterious Starling -- Rarest 
Extinct Bird
     _         
   <(+)__        Gan Uesli Starling 
     ((__/)=-    Kalamazoo, MI, USA
      `||`      
       ++        http://starling.ws 

Newbie-2-Newbie NetBSD Unix How-To Pages at... 
http://om-ah-hum.com/share/gus_netbsd_index.html