Thank you. I love your avatar! I was thinking of painting a picture of Wilbur painting Tux - I might do it one day. I've got a kind of love/hate relationship with Linux and have tried a number of versions of Ububtu and Xubuntu in the hope that I can eventually rid myself of Windows, but its reliance on the Net defeats me. I'm on a PAYG dongle which is slow and expensive so most of my downloads are through my mate's computer meaning I can't use the software center. Still, never mind. Open Source for Windows is good enough!

Having Wilber painting Tux is a great idea.

As far a Linux goes, it does rely heavily on the net for updates. Although, you could do the initial install and update from your friends internet connection and not worry about maintenance updates until you have access to a free broadband connection again. You could also go with a fully updated version that no longer pushes updates. I'm running Fedora 14 and it no longer gets updates (except for flash and browser updates).

Except for viruses, spyware, call home tracking, cost, proprietary software, BSOD and DRM, Windows is just fine.

Looks like that just about covers everything Tux in the exceptions.

I am now a 99% user of Fedora 16 and loving every minute of it. I only go back to Windows to use ConverXtoDVD cuz it isn't available in Linux, YET.

very cool I used to dabble in fractals as well haven't had my desktop up for some while now and have been purely mobile phone use. do you have a deviant art?
www.wi6791lly.deviantart.com here

Willy - I don't have a DA as I'm already pushed on the Net. Have you looked at my FF pages? I left a link in my opening thread.

Gnutux and Molly, my problem is that when searching for software using Windows, if I'm lucky enough to find a deb package, when I get it home and try to install it, it always tells me there are unsatisfied dependencies. If somebody wrote a program to enable me to download from USC using windows together with all dependencies, I could easily fall in love with Linux.

erisian just flipped through your ff page and you look very talented I was asking about a da because I knew a lot of fractal people on da at one time. look forward to seeing some more of your work

Some of those on DA are on FF as well. For example, you might know Lenord, MarkJaybee and Johann. I'm glad you like my work - thanks for commenting.

Welcome to GC, Erisian. Sorry for the late post. Just noticed your Hello post at the bottom of the stack and thought I would toss in my two cents worth. Very cool handle and even cooler is the way your created it from Greek Mythology. Very appropo for this forum.

Thanks Draconian. Nice to be here!

Downloading a random .deb or .rpm (or any Linux binary) from the net is going to be problematic, no matter how you approach it. If you download an outdated binary, that binary will most likely be based on and require older, outdated dependencies (or libs). In general, you don't want to downgrade your installed Linux distribution to match dependencies contained in an outdated .deb or .rpm.

The same holds true for the reverse. In most cases, you can't download a . deb or .rpm binary that requires newer dependencies (libs/apps) than is available in your installed Linux distribution. For example, I can't install a binary in Fedora 14 that is packaged for Fedora 16. Fedora 14 doesn't support the newer versions of libs and apps (dependencies) that are contained in Fedora 16.

In most cases, you will be installing binary packages from the official repositories provided by your Linux distribution's specific version. If installing an app on Ubuntu 10.10, you should be pulling that package from the official repository for Ubuntu 10.10 (or possibly some 3rd party repos specifically for Ubuntu 10.10).

Sorry if I'm covering ground that you're already aware of but many new Linux users still have the Windows mindset when it comes to installing software. They've always downloaded and installed executable from wherever they find them on the web and it just doesn't work that way in Linux. Installing software from managed central repositories makes life much easier and in my opinion, poses less of a security threat.

Having said all that and assuming you are indeed using the correct repository for your Linux version, you still have the issue of wanting to grab the app and all the necessary dependencies from the repository using Windows. For you to be able to do that, you will need to know the exact dependencies that are required. Once you know what those are, you can download them individually and install from a "local repository". The problem is there is no way to know what you already have installed and what you might need, without having access to your Linux box. You are stuck with downloading the package and checking that against your Linux install to determine the dependencies you might need. For example, with .deb ...

dpkg -p packagename.deb

One thing you might consider is a USB version of Linux that could be booted at the location where you have access to the broadband connection. Using that, you could utilize offline package management and update a desktop that is not net connected.

Your best best might be to install a fully updated version on Linux and install all the apps you need when you have access to a broadband connection. If you run across something else you need, make a list and install those apps the next time you have access to broadband (from the official repos for your specific Linux distro version).

You might also want to check out this thread, in which Photocomix was facing a similar problem (although he wasn't trying to grab the files from Windows).

Thank you. I fully intend to switch to Linux but I think it will be far easier when I can get a proper internet connection. Ubuntu Software Center will be all I need as far as I'm aware for installing software. Thank you anyway.

Just looked at your fractal work as I had some time to spare. I'm impressed! You've done some really good stuff there.