exposing packages to users (was Re: Fedora, Portable Edition?)

[Adam Williamson <awilliam redhat com>]

On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 02:59 -0500, Callum Lerwick wrote:

> I don't think windows users want to see a crapton of meaningless
> libraries in their add/remove dialog. I sure don't. I don't even want to
> see them in Fedora...

A couple of releases ago, Mandriva implemented a filter in rpmdrake (the
graphical package management tool) that shows only packages with a GUI
(basically, anything with an entry in the menus), and made it the
default view.

After enabling Kat by default somewhere back around 2006.0, that was
probably the second most unpopular change *ever*. Ever since then it's
been one of the #1 'gotchas' on the forums.

Sadly, people often wind up having to mess with 'system' packages to get
what they want to do done, it seems...

Having said that, Ubuntu has a slightly different approach to the same
problem - it has a lobotomized, Windows-style 'Add / Remove Programs'
application, and then it has synaptic for the full-fat stuff. I don't
know what user reaction to that has been, I don't follow the U community
very closely, but it's an alternative.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net