[kwlug-disc] What's the best desktop distribution?

[Chris Frey]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 02:07:46PM -0500, Paul Nijjar wrote:
> As for "everything should be packaged": well, yeah. And we should all
> have ponies and there should be world peace. But it is not going to
> happen, partially for political reasons and partially for technical
> ones. I would prefer a system that makes my life easy in the real
> world. 
> 
> Why can't somebody write code that will automatically register
> RubyGems and Drupal modules into APT's databases, so that running
> apt-get upgrade will inform me (and allow me to upgrade) those
> packages when there are fixes? There are already lots of reasonable
> packaging systems out there. Why can't they all just get along?

Not to be harsh, and maybe you don't realize it, but you're asking
for the Windows world here.

Do you trust every random site you pull a Drupal module from?  Obviously
yes, since you run the code, but so does everyone who installs
the latest whizbang EXE on their Windows box, and then hopes for
security updates from all those random sites.

Making 'apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade' work properly means that there
is someone behind the scenes doing the work for us.

So Lori is right.  The problem is that people aren't using apt enough.

If you go to the trouble of making your own repository, might
as well put it on the net, and share it.  And if you're going to
share it, you might as well get in touch with a Debian developer
so that everyone benefits, and you don't have to pay for the bandwidth
yourself.

And if that sounds like too much work, then you're still left with
maintaining your systems manually like you've always done.

It's a balance... and I've compiled my own programs enough to know that
sometimes it's not worth it to make a full package.  But packaging is
not rocket science either.  It's more like accounting... a little bit
time consuming, and a little bit boring. :-)

- Chris