linux

My old Compaq EVO N115 notebooks used to have a problem with overheating and shutdowns. Compaq did fix the problem with a firmware upgrade in June 2002, three months after I bought it, but the experience turned me off Compaq and HP notebooks for life. In April 2003, I was in Auburn, Alabama carrying it in a crummy bag when somehow it got water in the screen. I have not bothered to have it fixed since... "If the laptop is a year old, with a broken panel, it's time for a new one."

But I do still play around with Linux on it. Since about a month ago, I have been unable to compile the latest kernel, because when I type "make" I get an error about an undefined reference to __ctype_b and __ctype_upper... naturally I googled around to find out what is going on, but there is just no Quick Fix or easy command line I can type to get everything working again. I have been using the unstable release of Debian so everything is the latest version. Today I tried "apt-get -b source libc6" to try to build the C library again from sources. It has taken almost 4 hours so far, not 45 minutes like the README file said it would... and used up much more disk space than it said it would. I hope it solves the problems. apt-get is a great tool, but Linux still has user-friendliness issues. I just wish there had been an easy command I could have typed to upgrade or downgrade the C library to fix the problem.