APT, Yum and Red Carpet

[Jef Spaleta]

Hans Deragon wrote:

> However, apt has synaptic available as GUI. I am not aware of a GUI 
> for yum. For a desktop machine, a GUI is a must.

It's deceptive to think just about end-user oriented feature sets, when
deciding on future development paths.  One could argue that yum has a
technical advantage in terms of long term development inside rhl,
because its using the same python bindings that the current redhat tools
use to interact with the rpmdb. There is a definite development
advantage with code reuse.  So if you want the redhat tools to be
repository aware, make use of the technology that fits best with the
redhat tools.  

One could also argue that the redhat tools should be pitched, but anyone
arguing that would have to be pretty persuasive, or would have to have
really good timing to change the momentum surrounding the development of
the redhat tools (like anaconda and r-c-p).

The long term solution is of course bribing the repository technology
developers into sitting down over some pizza,beer and KK doughnuts and
hashing out a repository metadata standard so repos are as tool neutral
as possible.

But there is a deeper issue in your comment. For a nontechnical user's
desktop machine a GUI is a must...that is surely a truism. But now you
have to ask yourself the question...what is redhat's timeline for
seriously targeting non technical home desktops?  I personally don't
think this little hiccup about which choice of repo technology gets
bolted into rhl is going to matter on the same timescale of other
relevant issues which would make linux a prefered solution in the
mainstream nontechnical desktop market. 

--jef"Jef to Magic8Ball: 
        Is the next release going to target desktop users like Jef's mom
    Magic8ball to Jef: 
        Outlook not so good"spaleta
 
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