[arch-general] Painful installation of 4.3 - some general advice needed.

[richard terry]

Massive headache, well, actually it wasn't an upgrade it was a brand new HDD
(kept the old one). all this started when I was stupid enough to install
scribus > libreadline version problems and couldn't back track, Some other
file was somehow affected and needed to run a terminal because then  my arch
isntall wouldn't boot at all, so I opted to buy another disk for my laptop
and do a new install as I felt that at somepoint I'd have to upgrade anway.

I'd appreciate a bit of advice.

1) the libjepg.7 vs 62 problem - I've exhaustively tried every solution over
the last few hours on the forums and cannot get kmail to work - loads but
'poof; up in smoke once the gui appears
2) Dolphin -  I really liked konqueror - can one still install this as a
file browser. I note there is a kdebase-konqueror package, using this >
multiple 'file exists in the filesystem' messages I could use a force but
god knows what this will trash. Any alternatives.
3) Is there anyway to have two tool bars down the bottom like one could in
KDE3
4) is it is any way possible to import kmail boxes (in one go) into
thunderbird - mind you I like kmail better!
5) Kwrite ? same applies kdebase-kwrite but is it possible to install under
kde4.3?

Overall this has been a very very painful experience. I found the archlinux
iso would in no way allow me to partition and format my disk - I created
these with an external program > once they were recognised, at other times
not, but at the end of the day installation was impossible.

Chakra was kinder to me - recognised the existing partitions, and installed
everything (alpha3), mind you no keyboard, so it died at the add user, so I
used the arch install disk to boot that system, and manually added users and
grub-install.

Then every second program seems to whinge about the libjepg thing.

Not a happy chappy, having used ARCH since version 0.4 and it has always
been such a pleasure to use and maintain.

Any help/comments/advice would be muchly appreciated.

Richard