Suggestion for a new Download page

[Panu Matilainen]

On Fri, 2004-02-06 at 00:25, Jonas Pasche wrote:
> Hi Jason,
> 
> > The apt package is set up to configure itself upon the first invocation
> > based on the mirror list on the fedoralegacy server.
> > 
> > I'll write the docs if need be
> 
> Please be aware that Eric already has put together a documentation
> proposal for using apt. Before spending time on writing another one, can
> you please check back on:
> 
> http://www.fedoralegacy.org/docs/apt-rh8.php
> 
> Your comments are appreciated!

Hmm.. a few comments:

Step 2.1: after installation FL apt will prompt you to select a mirror
site, want it or not. So it's not optional by any means. You don't
really want to point people to the fedoralegacy-xx-mirrors.list files
because you can't download them, put someplace and have apt use it.
Instead the mirror-select script downloads those files, parses it and
prompts you with a menu to select the nearest mirror.

Step 3.2: "apt-get -f install" is about *fixing* a "broken" rpmdb,
"apt-get check" checks for it's consistency. There's no need to run that
under normal conditions, apt-get checks for the consistency anyway on
each and every run and suggests running apt-get -f install if it finds
unsatisfied dependencies. I'd suggest removing that step entirely.

Step 7:

"servers specified in the /etc/apt/sources.list" is probably a bit
confusing wrt "update" operation since there will be nothing in there by
default on FL apt, since the mirror-selector writes its entries into
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/mirror-select.list. So you might want to mention
the sources.list.d thingy as well.

The description of "updgrade" is a bit backwards: "upgrade" operation
will never, ever install any new packages or remove others, changed
dependencies or not. It'll just not upgrade something with changed
dependencies and on RHL that can be bad - see below.

Another thing: "dist-upgrade" is not a dangerous operation, really..
unless you put something like rawhide or a newer distro into your
sources list. The name suggests upgrading the whole distro but that's
basically a debianism - they have this policy that during a lifetime of
a given release updates aren't allowed to be obsoleted so you don't need
the extra dependency calculations of dist-upgrade, plain upgrade will do
to job. On RHL that's not the case - in fact you'll *have* to use
dist-upgrade to get all errata installed: for example "timeconfig" was
obsoleted by "redhat-config-time" within RHL 8.0 errata.

Other than these few mistakes/misunderstandings - nice, clean and simple
instructions for basic apt usage :)

	- Panu -

> 
> Jonas