__/ [ Sandman ] on Wednesday 16 August 2006 14:23 \__
> In article <mr-19AB58.13334216082006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Sandman <mr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> 3. Package installation
>>
>> Ubuntu ships with Synaptic for package management. Upon launch it
>> lists all packages by name, so you have a long list of extremely
>> cryptic names. They really really should do something about this.
>> Categorize it better, name all packages in human-readable form.
>> Something in the shape of:
>>
>> Multimedia
>> - Music player (xmms) [Install]
>> Plays many different music file formats
>>
>> - Movie player (vlc) (Installed)
>> Popular movie player
>>
>> - Movie player (mplayer) (Outdated) [Upgrade]
>> Multi-format media player
>>
>> I know about "sections", that's not it. There are literally thousands
>> of packages in synaptic, but only a handful of them are important to
>> the regular user. Hide the rest under "advanced".
>
> I apologize. Ubuntu does indeed have exactly this. It's - logically -
> located in the Applications menu and is called "Add/Remove
> Applications" and is just another front-end to apt but displays only
> GUI applications and puts sensible names on them (such as "XMMS Music
> Player") and sorts them in the same categories found in the menu. It
> even has the "Advanced" button, that opens Synaptic.
>
> Very good indeed.
YaST enables the user to search by package name (also to be fetched from CD's
or FTP repositories). But it could truly use something more hierarchical,
with icons, and with short descriptions for each package in the list. SUSE
is headed towards other package managers. It could really use an adaptation
of Ubuntu's new package manager that further simplifies apt-get and
Synaptic. I am not sure if Novell will stick with Zen or move to Smart,
which unifies many types of installers/packagers. They all seem to intersect
as time goes by. Desktop environments likewise...
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