Ranter or evangelist?

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 07/20/2009 11:51 PM, gilpel at altern.org wrote:

> This looks nice, but it's pain to get XMMS working for a newbie and the
> application is considered legacy. Wouldn't it be nice if it wasn't in the
> list of applications that are suggested to install with mplayer? I'm sure
> people who love XMMS would find it very easy to install with yum... or
> even rpm.

I don't think selectively blacklisting apps in the GUI search interface
in a semi arbitrary way is a feasible solution. Yes, it is a legacy app
but also very popular and widely used. I would be genuinely annoyed to
find that the package I want is in the repository but the nice graphical
interface decided that I shouldn't be shown it.

> How would anybody not familiar with gpk-application imagine that by
> removing a CD/DVD burner that doesn't work, namely Brasero, he'll also
> remove a very valuable application for listening to music (Rhythmbox) and,
> by the same occasion, also remove sound-juicer, which I know little about,
> but I suppose could be useful for other applications?

They get a listing of dependencies that are removed *before* removing
them. Should be carefully checking that list. One possible improvement
is a description of the dependencies along side the names. However if
you install or particulary remove packages blindly then I am afraid
tools cannot really be used to workaround that problem.

Rahul