[TriLUG] Substitute for pdftk?

[Steve Litt]

On Friday 22 August 2008 07:47, Alan Porter wrote:
> > but if that falls through I need a plan
> > B, because pdftk is integrated right into my business.
>
> Plan B
>
> Install a different distro in a VM and run it there.
>
> It's quick, dirty, and wasteful; but you should not have to waste a lot
> of time on it.
>
> Alan

Thanks Alan,

Yeah, I was thinking of keeping Mandriva 2007 on one computer, and having that 
computer do the work.  I spoze I could have made some sort of script or even 
client server program to automate the transfer back and forth. 

It turns out that I'm OK in the short run, because unknown to me when I wrote 
the email, Mandriva has rpm's for pdftk, and they work. Because up until a 
couple months ago I was on dialup, my package management techniques are 20th 
century. Now that I discovered the ease of installing packages from the 
Internet, I'll probably have a lot less problems.

My long term solution is hopefully to work with Sid Steward to come up with a 
more idiot friendly makefile, and to add needed install documentation to the 
project. That way if I later don't have broadband, or if I switch to a distro 
not providing pdftk, I'll still have pdftk.

Your suggestion reminds me I've never worked with virtual machines. My new 
computer has a dual core pentium 64 and 8GB of RAM, so maybe this is a good 
time to get into that. I'd prefer to go with free software. What do you 
recommend -- UML, Xen, OpenVZ, coLinux, mkLinux, or something else?

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US