Re: [Synaptic-devel] Re: introduction and status debtags

[Michael Vogt]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 12:54:29AM +0100, Alex de Landgraaf wrote:
> > I'm the maintainer and main developer of synaptic. Can you please help
> > me making synaptic to a love releationship for you :) I mean, tell me
> > about the stuff you hate (or even better post it to
> > address@hidden) and we will try to address those issues.
> 
> Hehe, this was to be expected, I was a bit harsh. Sorry, please let me explain
> :)

No problem :) We are very open for feedback. But we like to get that
feedback, so if someone if unhappy, we want to hear about it so that
we can think about it to make synaptic better. While browsing the
morphix website I noticed some talk about "yet another apt
frontend". What do you plan here? I'm just curious, as I wrote above,
we are always looking for new ideas :)
 
> My main problem with the current debian package hierarchy is that you need to
> know what you're looking for. You and I know what we want, a package is just a
> search away, but browsing 10000+ packages in synaptic, aptitude or dselect for
> a
> new application isn't something an average user does voluntarily. It's not a
> problem of synaptic, and I have only just played around with synaptic-debtags
> (it should prove useful once it's more integrated), but if we want Debian to
> appeal for new (non-technical) users we need to go in a different direction.
> It's not my terrain but I'm afraid that direction is called an opensource
> *bitestounge* Click&Run.

Yeah, that's indeed a problem. There are just to many packages. The
debtags system is a big step. Unfortunatly the debtags integration is
stalled somewhat in synaptic mostly because of lack of time. Help here
would be appreciated (just in case the morphix people don't have
enough projects ;). I think the debtags system is wonderfull and I
really hope that it will move inside of debian/control. 

I wonder if a less radical approach for you could be to create a apt
repository with a subset of the debian packages. So that the user does
not have to dig around through 13.000 packages but only to say
1000. Chosing the most popular/usefull applications and present them
with polished (and maybe translated) descriptions (don't have ~100
editors in the repository but ~5). 

> I think that with extra semantics above debian/control (again debtags),
> server-side statistics and user-orientated descriptions put together in a
> friendly webbased interface might be the single thing Debian still lacks on a
> usability level. 
> I don't like Lindows anymore than the next Debianer (well, we ignore them
> mostly), but Click&Run does make a (reasonably) large amount of packages more
> accessable for non-technical users. We've been discussing this in our little
> Morphix-community, maybe the time is ripe for a push towards an opensource
> alternative. 

I haven't seen "Click&Run" in action and know little about the
concept. I guess it's a good thing if it's easy to use. But do does
lindows handle package upgrade (like security stuff)? Or the removal
of packages? IMHO you always need basic package management
capabilities (stuff like dependency handling comes also into my
mind). How do they present this kind of stuff?

> Would I personally use it? Probably not. Would the regular Debian public use
> it?
> They'd probably go for synaptic first, and I wouldn't blame them. Still, I
> believe it's worth considering: it would lower the threshold for new users who
> can't see the the forrest through all the trees.

Lowering the threshold is always a good idea :) How far are is morphix
with adding this kind of infrastructure (again just curious)?

> Anyway, just my 2 cents. I just wanted to state that synaptic is a nice piece 
> of
> work, it's just not for everyone and their neighbour.

If you have suggestions or ideas how to make synaptic easier for the
average user (aunt tilly) don't hesitate to tell us. We where thinking
about a special "upgrade druid" with limited choices to install
(security) upgrades or make dist-upgrades. But this is not quite the
click&run idea :)

BTW, I wasn't aware of morphix. It looks very nice (haven't tested it
though, I only have a isdn link, so downloading a iso takes a bit
longer :)

thanks for your feedback,
 Michael

-- 
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo