Andrew Coppin wrote:
Windows has more package management facilities than most people realise.
For example, go install Office 2007. In fact, just install Excel 2007, not the whole thing. Windows Installer can automatically figure out that you *do* need to install the Spell Checker (since Excel uses that), but you do *not* need to install the Grammar Checker (since only Word and PowerPoint use that, and you haven't selected to install those). Not only does it decide what to install, but you can query it
Thats a specific installer for a specific program. The whole problem with windows is that every 3rd party program is responsible for its own installation and removal and is free to do that in its own way. It also encourgaes monolithic installers, installers that include everything. However, the software you are complaining about is mostly FOSS software that had its genesis on Linux/Unix and assumes that build dependencies can be resolved at compile time and that install dependencies can be resolved at install time. Windows of course fails these two assumptions completely. Until something like apt-get becomes popular, widespread and well supported, you are going to continue to feel pain. I suggest that you throw you support behind something like GetIt: http://www.puchisoft.com/GetIt/ because hoping that Linux and Mac devs will fix windows problems is not going to get you anywhere.
I guess it depends on whether you think your students are going into datacenter support (probably Unix) or desktop support or application development (obviously all desktops are Windows).
Do you know the parable of the blind men and the elephant? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant Here's a funny thing. I know a large number of professional software engineers and people who mix that with sys admin work. Only a tiny fraction of those people write code for the windows platform. Do I conclude from my data that most developers develop for Linux? Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/