Thoughts and Questions On Yum, Up2Date. Etc.

[Davy Brion]

On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 21:28, William Hooper wrote:
> > Users should be offered
> > a choice of updating installed software or adding new software from
> > official repositories.
> 
> And what part of that doesn't up2date do?

up2date has no way of listing available packages that aren't installed
already... not sure if the CLI version allows it, but the GUI version
doesn't. so up2date doesn't allow 'adding new software from official
repositories'

> > Unless  you're an admin, there should never be a
> > need to even know source lists exist.
> 
> You don't.

if you want yum to work in an acceptible manner, you _do_ have to edit
those files manually.  


> > Microsoft doesn't make users do this;
> 
> Who cares?  

i know most of us dislike microsoft, but as much as we dislike them, you
have to give them credit for making things easy for _normal_ users.
Linux distro's in general have the tendency to make some important tasks
anything but easy for newcomers. Do you honestly think this is the
correct approach?  For your sake, i hope not.


> If your main arguement is "This isn't how
> Microsoft would do things" you have already lost.

if your argument is 'we shouldn't do this just because microsoft does
it' then you shouldn't be arguing about how an operating system should
work in the first place.  For a lot of users, microsoft does a good job
in making things easy and simple... there's no shame at all in copying
that approach.  Unless you want things to be hard so you can feel 1337.

> > neither
> > should RedHat.
> 
> Last time I checked, this was a Fedora list, not a Red Hat list.

yea unfortunately though, the entire Fedora development process is
controlled by Red Hat.