[ale] Linux for "normal" people?

[Michael Mealling]

On Tue, 2004-11-16 at 13:41, Geoffrey wrote:
> Michael Mealling wrote:
> > 'normal' people want painless (that doesn't mean 'intelligent') 
> > application (not 'package') management. Some things that I think
> > packages need on linux to enable this:
> > 
> > * the concept of package 'suites' (i.e. a suite contains all "office"
> > apps such as Open Office, Dia, etc) 
> 
> SuSE has this.
> 
> > * package aliases so I don't have to know _exactly_ what the package is
> > called before I can get it with yum or apt-get. I've had to go find the
> > rpm in order to query it for its name before I can tell yum to install
> > it and its dependencies.
> 
> As I've noted before, Yast has this.  You can search by:
> 
> Name, summary, description, (what the package) provides and (what the 
> package) requires

I know SUSE has some of it. Mandrake has other parts. Both mix low level
packages (libraries, fonts, etc) in with higher level applications which
confuse end users. I'd prefer it if it would work on SUSE, Mandrake,
Fedora, Debian, etc. and that the metadata came from the developer of
the application and not the distro sponsoring company. That creates
package/application naming disparities. 

> > * A _standard_ way for CVS checkouts, source tarballs and binary
> > tarballs to co-exist with RPM and APT...
> 
> I don't know of any package system that handles this, don't see how it 
> could. (easily)

I didn't say what I was after was easy....

-MM