Let's not turn developers into a housewives. You are developer, you should know how software works, and you should know how to download, install , upgrade and run it. And if you don't, then learn, otherwise it is your fault or you just picked wrong profession for your career. :)
Igor this is not really true because a good installer would be good. And do not underestimate newcomers experience. I want it to be excellent. Now alex squeak shipped old libraries that were banned on certain linux distribution so binding everything is not the panacea.
I think it depends on what do you want to do in the mid-long term: throwing away the squeak bitmap rendering and using Cairo for real? What should be the external library, the squeak bitmap rendering or Cairo?
I don't understand your question. Cairo is one of the backends for Athens. And it quite possible happen, won't be the best one. If you don't want to install cairo library, you can try Athens without cairo installed. Then you should use AthensBalloonSurface instead of AthensCairoSurface.
Alexandre
-- _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.
-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.