Thoughts and Questions On Yum, Up2Date. Etc.

[William Hooper]

Davy Brion said:
> 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...

up2date --show-package-dialog

> 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'

up2date -i new_package

>> > 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.

Don't use yum, use up2date which has the feature you want.

>> > Microsoft doesn't make users do this;
>>
>> Who cares?
>
> i know most of us dislike microsoft,

Who said I didn't like Microsoft?  I just don't like people using the "but
all my friends are doing it" arguement.

> but as much as we dislike them, you
> have to give them credit for making things easy for _normal_ users.

Which has led to things like Lindows running as root all the time.

> 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.

Life is about learning.

>> 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...

If users are happy with Microsoft, I say more power to them.  Last time I
checked, though, Microsoft didn't have a Linux distro.  Things are
different, that's life.

-- 
William Hooper