Re: [Synaptic-devel] Synaptic in the press

[Sebastian Heinlein]

Am Do, den 22.04.2004 um 23:36 Uhr -0400 schrieb Guillaume Pratte:

> I do think something like this is missing in Debian. It's not enough to have 
> a 
> KDE meta-package if it is treated the same as a normal package by Synaptic. I 
> feel there should be an "evident place" in the application where you can 
> easily install, for instance, Gnome 2.6 when it comes into unstable, without 
> having to know if the package you need to install is called "gnome-core", 
> "gnome-deskop", "gnome-2.6" or whatever name the meta-package actually has...

Debian has got the tasksel system. During installation you are asked
what the destination of your system is. So selecting desktop systems get
you a full qualified desktop - including a kde and gnome desktop.

The meta package for gnome is called "gnome". If you install gnome you
would get the latest gnome release. Gnome2.4 will be updated to 2.6
automatically. The fluent transition to later version numbers is a base
requirement for Debian packages.

> The same goes for important desktop applications, such as Gimp, KMail and 
> Evolution, Firefox, etc. It would be nice to have a "popularity" meta-tag 
> that would enable Synaptic to display important and popular software the user 
> might want to install.

Debian is about choice - the choice of the user. Debian is no commercial
distru, so there should be no selections made. We don't want to favour
any package over another one.

We got a popularity polling mechanism in Debian, that is used to
optimize the contents of the installation CD-Roms. Perhaps we can base a
new filter on this one. But this is perhaps a crazy idea.

> Check out these Xandros Network screenshots, even if they do not portray 
> exactly what I mean :
> 
> http://www.xandros.com/images/screenshots/xn2_ss.png
> http://www.xandros.com/images/screenshots/xn_ss.png

I think that using sane defaults is the better option. The desktop
tasksel/meta packages should provide such a variety of packages that
nobody should make use of the package manager at the beginning of his or
her Debian time.

So the gnome meta package does not only install the core gnome desktop -
it installs a complete working environment based on gnome.

Regards,

Sebastian