future of smart

[Cliff Wells]

On Thu, 2008-06-05 at 11:19 +0200, Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Cliff Wells wrote:
> 
> >> I actually thought it was better than Pup/Pirut/Puplet...
> >> Then again, those were pretty horrible to start with :-)
> >
> > Well, it *looks* pretty enough, but only being able to select a single
> > package at a time for installation is unacceptable.   I skipped the
> > whole Pup/Pirut/Puplet stage (been using Smart for a long while) so I
> > can't comment on them.
> 
> My point was that they're not the same, Smart is more like Synaptic
> (for APT) or Yum Extender (for Yum) where as PackageKit is more like
> app-install/update-manager/update-notifier or pup/pirut/puplet...

Personally, I think the simplified versions have little reason to exist
(except perhaps something like yum-updatesd for notifying a user of
updates).  Smart-gui (for example) seems to adequately address the needs
of a range of users without hiding important information or making the
process tedious.   I know there's a push to "dumb-down" the Linux
desktop to make it more appealing to Windows refugees, but I think this
is a mistake.  They are refugees for a reason =)

> According to my understanding, the inspiration is "Add/Remove Programs"

Except I don't believe that model translates well to Linux, where
"Program" only occasionally means "monolithic package", and more often
means "a whole set of packages that are interrelated".  

> > I understand PackageKit's author is planning a rewrite of the frontend
> > but I find it regretful that Fedora project decided to push it out the
> > door when it clearly is nowhere near ready.
> 
> I thought that Bleeding Edge was what running Fedora was all about :-)

Yes, but there has to be actual blood in order to bleed.  The current
PackageKit frontend is dry as a bone.

> 
> Actually it does have a Smart backend, though it is not 100% complete.
> Summary at http://packagekit.org/pk-faq.html#how-complete, and code at:
> http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=packagekit.git;a=tree;f=backends/smart

Ah, nice.  I'd looked but apparently missed that.  Hopefully the author
gets the GUI in shape for Fedora 10.

Cliff