[ale] just installed LibreOffice in Linux, should have been easier

Don Lachlan ale-at-ale.org at unpopularminds.org
Fri Mar 11 21:31:47 EST 2011


On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 8:11 PM, Ron Frazier
<atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com> wrote:
> Steps to remove OpenOffice on Linux:
> 01) Access the software center
> 02) Select OpenOffice word processor and click remove.
> 03) Select OpenOffice spreadsheet and click remove.
> 04) Select OpenOffice database and click remove.
> 05) Select OpenOffice presentation and click remove.
> 06) And do the same for 1 or 2 more.
> 07) Access Synaptic package manager.
> 08) Search for openoffice.
> 09) Filter by installed programs only.
> 10) Manually select each of about a half dozen items and select complete
> removal and apply.

What are steps 1-6 for? AFAIK, you only need to remove the package in
7-10. Also, I don't think that steps 7-10 are cumbersome, especially
since it is a single interface to search/install/uninstall, compared
to three different UI on Windows. In your Windows checklist, you
skipped two install steps:

pre-01a) Search internet for software package
pre-01b) Navigate to download page.

Larger projects are usually easy to find and navigate, but lots of them are not.

> Steps to install LibreOffice on Linux:

Well, that is a cumbersome process. However, when I searched for
"libreoffice install", the first result was for a method to install
via APT (synaptic):

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/libreoffice-gets-3-3-0-stable-version-released-ppa-installation-instructions-included.html

> Also, this should have been in the Ubuntu repositories, or LibreOffice
> should provide a repository of their own.  As far as I know, I
> completely bypassed the Synaptic / Apt package manager.  So, does anyone
> know how I can get Synaptic / Apt to understand that his new application
> is there and auto update it?

There does appear to be a community Ubuntu repo for LibreOffice.
Because of the popularity, it will probably be in the main Ubuntu
11.04 repo, when that is released.

LibreOffice may not offer a repository, but it did package it for
Ubuntu. From personal experience, packaging software for a dozen
different Linux distributions (and each of their supported versions)
is a MASSIVE task. If you're also expecting them to maintain an APT
repository for Ubuntu (and a different repo for RHEL and SLES and
Debian, etc.), I think that's an unfair expectation.

Synaptic is just a front-end to APT, which is just an interface for
dpkg; if you installed packages via dpkg, then Synaptic will see them.
To upgrade the packages, Synaptic needs to access to a repository that
has new packages - the link above will tell you how to add that.

I think part of the issue here is one of expectations. Most GNU/Linux
users install software in two ways: via their distribution's package
manager and via tarball. Young projects often rely on tarballs but
they get picked up by distributions as they mature. Right now, it's
new.

Also, we could code a menu option for "uninstall" for each package, or
we could tell users "Go to your distribution's package manager and
remove it there". The second option saves developer time and maintains
a consistent UI for the user.

-Lachlan



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