GUI for dpkg

**detyabozhye** · February 11th, 2006

To begin, I don't mind using the Terminal at all, I use it almost every day. But when I first started using Ubuntu, I was searching all over for a GUI way to install those .deb files. So now, I'm writing a GUI front-end for dpkg using Mono. It works like this: person downloads deb file because there are absolutely no repositories that have that package, person right-clicks deb package and clicks "Open with Gpkg", person sees a dialog with general info about the package and an install button, person clicks "Install", Gpkg reports if package is installed successfully or not.

Now, I have a few questions:
Do you think this is a good idea?
Has it been done before? (I haven't found anything similar, but I don't really want to reinvent the wheel)
Am I taking the right aproach?
Any suggestions?
Wanna help?

**Perfect Storm** · February 11th, 2006

I think there's an application which make the .deb installable if you double click them. Though I can't remember where I saw that.

**Mustard** · February 11th, 2006

You may be reinventing the wheel. I believe there is a third party project going on somewhere in the ubuntu community that is considering just such an issue.

**engla** · February 11th, 2006

There should be plenty of applications that do this.

In another thread where this was discussed I posted a python app that basically did just what you described there, and simultaneously another guy posted his take at it..

So don't reinvent the wheel (like we did