I apologize beforehand for the long, bombastic rant to soon follow,
not to mention the fact that most of it is wandering dangerously off-topic.
Maybe if there's more dissent to my opinion (how could that be possible? :)
we can take it offline?
And lo, upon Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 02:17:35PM +0200, Thomas Vander Stichele spaketh thusly:
> > I haven't tried apt-rpm, but if rpmfind (the command-line client) would ever
> > work properly for me, that would be a great solution, since I use the
> > webclient to find almost all the rpms I'm looking for.
> >
> > The problem with "solutions" like Red Carpet is they are not flexible enough
> > even for non-power users, since there are many cases where custom (that is,
> > non-distribution) rpms confuse Red Carpet so that it either can't install
> > packages, or wants to remove a bunch of packages you already have installed
> > for some reason.
>
> This is hardly a Red-Carpet problem. It's a problem with the other
> packages. There are a *lot* of badly done packages out there. If they're
> done badly, of course they risk confusing rpm, apt-get or red-carpet or
> any other solution out there. I'll state again: it's the PACKAGES, not
> the PACKAGE MANAGER, that is to blame.
Okay, so when a relatively green user is trying to install the latest
version of gabber (not available yet from their distro) so he can chat
with his friends, but can't install it because Red Carpet doesn't know what
package contains the file /lib/libssl.so.2 that gabber requires, and
then gets lost in a sea of insane openssl version numbers (a,b,c,d,etc);
are you going to suggest to the user that they write an email to the
openssl people to make their versioning scheme a little more sane? When
that accomplishes nothing, what are you going to tell the user then?
At least with command-line rpm, I can give step-by-step directions
as to which version of openssl they need, how to install them, etc. With
Red Carpet, they're SOL because the only room for user input is to
confirm or cancel whatever Red Carpet thinks it should do. At least,
I would expect to be able to do things like tell it to ignore dependancies,
to force the install, to redirect packages, etc. etc. Things I can do
with command-line rpm, in other words. After encountering a few
situations like these, I suspect many users will do exactly what I did:
stop trying to use Red Carpet for anything at all (I know at least 2 other
new Linux users at my workplace who did just that). That may work for
me and the users, but for Red Carpet advocates out there I suspect that is less
than satisfactory.
My point here is that if the tool is going to be simple, then it should work
in 99% of the cases, and in the other 1% there should be a suitable
workaround (within the tool). Not 99% of the construed cases (e.g. "these are the
only packages that you really want, dummy!"), but 99% of the real-world
cases: telling the user to just give up and forget trying to install some
package because Red Carpet doesn't know what to do with it (or worse yet, that
they should uninstall a package because Red Carpet doesn't know what to do
with it) is not the correct answer. People install rpms that are not supplied
by Red Hat or Ximian or Mandrake or SuSe, etc. If it their package manager is
going to get confused because of that, then I consider that the fault of
the package manager- not the packages, not the user, not Linus Torvalds,
not Hugh Fritz Hollings or anyone else.
I don't like to see Linux applications move towards the MS model where the users
with the know-how are left behind in favor of the simpletons, and where everything
is stripped of functionality for the sake of simplicity. Both new users as well
as power users *must* be accomidated, and I don't think that's an impossible
task- but it requires creativity and an open mind. Unfortunately, the trend
with alot of these applications is to swing the pendulum all the way towards
no user-control, for the sake of simplicity... at which point I must ask what
the user is gaining over other OSes.
>
> As for your comment re: non-power users, I don't really agree. A normal
> user using red-carpet should (and probably will) stick to stuff provided
> by his distribution. So he won't have the badly behaving packages in the
> first place. No single software or packaging tool will ever protect a
> user against himself, and it's not because a user *can* install a bunch of
> crap packages that he also *should* do so. In any case, it's not fair to
> blame the package managers.
If you really believe that a non-power user is going to stick to stuff provided
by their distribution, then you're absolutely insane, no offense. If that were
the case, of course, the user would have little need for Red Carpet at all (Red
Carpet itself is typically an additional download). Do you think that Electronics
Boutique runs their business based on the concept that Wintel users only installing
programs that are part of their "official" OS? Do we really want to put ourselves
in the position where we tell newbies that all of the myriad of software packages
on the net for Linux are off-limits to them because Red Carpet can't figure
out how to install them? When they can run Windows and download a package
and install it with InstallShield with few apparent problems (nevermind
trying to explain to them how bad InstallShield is)?
Think of it this way, a new user is trying out Linux because they want to
see what all of the hub-bub is about. Mabye they have some Unix experience.
They hear about all these great free software projects like OpenOffice
and XMMS and galeon, KDE, GNOME, etc. that they don't have to pay for, and
that anyone who wants to can take a look at the source code to and modify.
Now, they want to try these programs. Are you going to tell them they can
only use the programs that their distribution tells them they should use?
"Whatever you do, don't go to freshmeat.net or sourceforge! Or, if you
do, don't expect the package manager we told you to use to work right from
now on... you'll have to download the whole Ximian distribution and install
by hand now.. oh by the way, we're not going to tell you what the
ftp site is either because you should be using Red Carpet, so get rid of
those dirty non-approved rpms in your system!" I have a strong distaste
for that.
>
> Debian users are pretty snobbish about their packages, but IMO they just
> were lucky that their package tool is not used by more distros. I'm sure
> that if other distros were using apt, you would get the same issues on
> debian-based systems.
Perhaps. I've never used apt (or apt-rpm). My point is that rpm by itself
is not enough for most users (hell, it's not enough for me... I don't like
having to manually download package after package until
all dependancies are resolved). I've run into problems with just about
every automated rpm tool. I have other issues with Red Carpet (limited
channels, no interface to download non-channel rpms which may nonetheless
contain applications even newbies would like, etc). For my purposes, a
tool like rpmfind, if I could ever get it to download the right URLs, would
be great, and with a snazzy GUI/wizard could provide a good interface to
newbies. As it is now, at least for me, rpmfind is less functional than Red Carpet,
and that's saying alot since I don't have Red Carpet installed :)
Even better would be a package-format agnostic interface (using plugins or
some-such thing to do the format-specific stuff) that could be run on
any system, Debian, RPM, Mandrake, and would provide a unified interface to
packages (even if it only offered least-common denominator interface).
Again, I know I may sound like I'm bashing Red Carpet, but I'm really not
trying to be that specific- it's just an example of what I think was done poorly
(or, at the minimum, stands to be redeemed): the loss of control by the
user in Linux applications (esp wrt system administration apps). I saw this
happen with the Gnome 2 beta control panel (don't know what it looks like
these days, but back in the early days when I installed it and then desperately
tried to roll it back), and with many other configuration programs. I think
the developers for Red Carpet made a pretty, semi-functional package manager
frontend (although I have difficulties with the limited channel system), and
I commend them for that. If they are going to suggest it to users as the
end-all be-all of package installers, however, they need to go back and
retool it so even when it doesn't work, it can be *made* to work (without
making the user bend over and take it in the rear first).
That's just my opinion, and I may be wrong. :)
--
Aaron Gaudio prothontar @ tarnation.dyndns.org
http://tarnation.dyndns.org/~aaron
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"From fullness, aspect. From aspect, being. From being, emptiness."
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