Hi,

> Hello, I'm new here, but now new in Linux.  I've been a RedHat/Fedora
> user about 10 years.
> 
> The rapid turnover in Fedora made me seek out a more longlasting
> distribution, now I'm testing Scientific Linux.  SL installed cleanly
> for me and starts fine.
> 
> I'm having trouble getting some packages installed that we really
> need.  In Fedora systems, we have been using the livna service to get
> RPMS for things that Fedora won't provide, such as nvidia proprietary
> video drivers.  On the SL, I tried to install the nvidia drivers at
> the optional repository server, but it doesn't work as configured by
> default.  I can build a new RPM for my systems, I don't think that is
> trouble.  I also want to run the newest lyx, and I've found that,
> after building and installing  aiksaurus, then lyx does build just
> fine.  I can post those RPMs in case anybody wants them.
> 
> The application where I'm really having trouble is Gnumeric. I'm
> trying to build the version that is supplied with Fedora 8, which is
> gnumeric-1.6.3-12. The problem is that trying to build it leads back
> into a dependency HELL.  First it wants goffice and libgda, and then
> when I try to build that, it wants version of several devel packages
> that are newer than the ones in SL5.  See:
> 
> error: Failed build dependencies:
>         sqlite-devel >= 3.4.0 is needed by libgda-3.0.1-4SL5.x86_64
>         freetds-devel is needed by libgda-3.0.1-4SL5.x86_64
>         postgresql-devel is needed by libgda-3.0.1-4SL5.x86_64
>         mdbtools-devel is needed by libgda-3.0.1-4SL5.x86_64
>         xbase-devel is needed by libgda-3.0.1-4SL5.x86_64

I think for any of these dependencies you should try the rpmforge third party
repository. Dag, Dries, or even Axel Thimms (atrpms.net) provide a range of
RPM's for RHEL and Fedora releases.

Regards,

Michael.