<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >What?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Glibc Installation HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Introduction" HREF="introduction.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Why?" HREF="why.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Preparations" HREF="preparations.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="sect1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Glibc Installation HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="why.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 2. Introduction</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="preparations.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="sect1" ><H1 CLASS="sect1" ><A NAME="what" ></A >2.2. What?</H1 ><P > If you do not know what glibc is by now, don't worry! When I first had problems with a new program I wanted to compile, I only knew that my version of glibc was not sufficient for the compile. Now that I know more, I will try to explain in a very simple way what glibc does.</P ><P >The glibc package contains a library written in the programming language of C. Libraries are a very useful thing in programming; instead of inventing the wheel from scratch for operations such as computing the square-root of a number, such common functions are stored in separate files—the so-called libraries. When a new version of a library is published it often contains some new functions, uses more efficient algorithms for already implemented functions, and so on.</P ><P >This is the reason why some programs complain about an older version of glibc: the current version just does not contain all the functions the program needs in order to run.</P ><P >I know this is not technically correct in all detail, but it gives you a basic understanding of the architecture behind.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="why.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="preparations.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Why?</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="introduction.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Preparations</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >