Woe Is Me (...and I cry for help!)

[Noah0504]

Cry with me as I tell a little story and ask for help.

I first messed around with Linux 5 or 6 years ago when I had almost no idea what it really was. Then, the means I had to use to install Linux on my horrible, horrible machine was very cruel. I never was able to get any functionality out of a distribution, and I gave up hope forever... until I found Ubuntu that is.

Ubuntu is a saving grace. I was able to use the live CD (about 2 years ago), and really feel comfortable using Linux. I slowly became a huge advocate for free software, and I felt really good. Soon I realized that I wanted to tackle more difficult tasks in Linux: compiling source, etc. I read a few tutorials, and was able to build my first application from source. However, I'm quite anal and I felt a little messy downloading so many requirements to compile an application. I soon got over that little hurdle, but I soon arrived at another. I wanted to learn how to create .deb packages that I could offer to the community. I started to do research and discovered that it was hard for me to follow. I suppose I'm more of a visual learner (although I can read a physics book and keep up), and reading through tutorials wasn't working.

Now, this is where I stand. To keep a few of my favorite application up to date, I've added quite a few repositories to my sources.list. This is a problem I don't like. I think there should be one large repository that many can contribute to. I want many updated, stable packages that new or lazy users will have easy access to. I am now asking for help. I will provide the resources and help to the best of my ability if a few good souls would like to join me in starting a third party repository. If you'd be interested, please reply or feel free to email me at NoahMD@gmail.com

Thanks.

[rabid emu]

Sorry bro, there's nothing that I need that I can't get and keep up to date using official repos. Good luck though.

[~LoKe]

Having masses of applications in a single repository seems slightly messy, in my opinion. There's a repository out there for everything. Just open up google and search for "opera repository" or something similar, and you'll get results.

[Kateikyoushi]

I do not think it is necessary, how many repos do we need 4-5 ? Most people try to stay away frm third party repos.
Do not forget you need mirrors as well because faster DL speed means more to most than using only one repo.

[Brainfart]

It's actually kinda funny that you like the idea. Gentoo has a single repository of sorts (you can add others if you like), but it keeps track of things that many people would never care about. IIRC, the main directory tree for it is about 600MB, but that includes the information for packages I don't ever want to install (e.g. kernel sources not for my architecture, DEs I don't like, etc...). /var/cache/apt on this box is also a li'l over 500MB, and odds are I won't be wanting most of the software it keeps track of. Now, I'll admit that 500MB isn't much on a new hard drive, but if you want it on a more restricted system it could be an issue.

[rai4shu2]

For updated and stable I usually go with Fedora. They typically keep two different versions of rpms in their repos (new and newer).