brentoboy
September 29th, 2005, 04:04 AM
The biggest weakness I can see with aptitude is that every package is of equal emphasis. Packages, sub packages, stand alone stuff, documentation... whatever. Everything is created equal.
So, my ignorant self says: for my new Ubuntu, I want to set up an apache server, php, mysql, and samba.
And I find that there are 400+ php things, ditto for mysql, and apache has a whole bunch of crap too. Samba doest install its own documentation, unless you ask for it, and there are a dozen and one packages that may or may not actually be needed in order to be a "generic" apache server.
The descriptions are sometimes really helpful, and sometimes quite worthless. In some cases, only the programmer and uber-geeks have any idea what is excess and what is important. We need collections of packages.
For instance, suppose I want the Java runtime, and the build tools necessary to compile Java apps. Using my windows experience, and my newfound knowledge of synaptic (which I absolutely love) I search for java - and java compiler. there are too many choices, half of which look like they are absolutely necessary, but probably just take up harddrive space, and don't add any menu items to gnome, so I wont even know they are there.
We need umbrella packages. A package that lists is sub-packages and related packages and tells us what we need and what is optional, and what we need to know to select the "questionably necessary."
packages that represent “applications” would be bolded in the list (or the others wouldn't even show up unless you asked for “lesser” packages. ) When you select an application with subcomponents, it is actually a tree, that you can expand and select the subcomponents – which have default selections determined by the main component.
this is “sort of” implemented already – there are packages – like “gnome” that includes tons of other “dependencies” but a subcomponent is different then a dependency.
any comments?
So, my ignorant self says: for my new Ubuntu, I want to set up an apache server, php, mysql, and samba.
And I find that there are 400+ php things, ditto for mysql, and apache has a whole bunch of crap too. Samba doest install its own documentation, unless you ask for it, and there are a dozen and one packages that may or may not actually be needed in order to be a "generic" apache server.
The descriptions are sometimes really helpful, and sometimes quite worthless. In some cases, only the programmer and uber-geeks have any idea what is excess and what is important. We need collections of packages.
For instance, suppose I want the Java runtime, and the build tools necessary to compile Java apps. Using my windows experience, and my newfound knowledge of synaptic (which I absolutely love) I search for java - and java compiler. there are too many choices, half of which look like they are absolutely necessary, but probably just take up harddrive space, and don't add any menu items to gnome, so I wont even know they are there.
We need umbrella packages. A package that lists is sub-packages and related packages and tells us what we need and what is optional, and what we need to know to select the "questionably necessary."
packages that represent “applications” would be bolded in the list (or the others wouldn't even show up unless you asked for “lesser” packages. ) When you select an application with subcomponents, it is actually a tree, that you can expand and select the subcomponents – which have default selections determined by the main component.
this is “sort of” implemented already – there are packages – like “gnome” that includes tons of other “dependencies” but a subcomponent is different then a dependency.
any comments?