Re: OFF TOPIC [was]Re: Linux needs control.exe

Eric Youngdale (eric@sub2317.jic.com)
Sun, 27 Oct 1996 09:28:42 -0500


>Joe User often is as baffled by the terminology as anything else & a
>poorly designed GUI control panel won't help. I'm no fan of Billy, but
>Win 95 is nearly there. The distressing thing is that we're all
>completely in the dark about what the installed stuff is actually
>doing/for etc. My Win 95 system is almost full now and I'm almost afraid
>to remove junk because it's difficult to be sure what's needed. I keep
>my Linux system well pruned (by hand), but only because I'm fairly sure
>what various libs/executables are for.

Actually, this is something that RPM helps a lot with. You
can query the database with a command to find out what package it comes
from. For example:

bash$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/wc
textutils-1.19-2

While this may not tell you everything about why a file is present on the
system, it can narrow it down an incredible amount.

-Eric