Submitted 26-May-00 by Denis HAVLIK:
| At the moment, we offer three ways of choosing packages:
|
| 1) you trust us to give you a nice set of packages.
| 2) step 1: you tell the installer what kind of packages you are
| interested in, and trust us that we know which packages
| go in which group
| step 2: by moving a slider left-right, you decide how many MB
| of packages you really want, and trust us to give you only "the
| best of" if you move the slider to the left.
| 3) you want to choose the packages individually
|
| I beleive that 1 and 2 are fine, but 3 is a kind of stupid with 1000+
| packages. This is a major problem, but at the moment noone knows how to
| improve the process - we are completely open for sugestions here.
The problem with 1 and 2 is the scoring system used. As an example,
the vast majority of people do not have Palm Pilots, but the various
pilot-linking apps are scored very highly. At the same time, a great
number of libraries are scored as ``garbage''. If you don't do an
expert install and select packages individually (a time consuming
task) you frequently find need for something that wasn't installed and
scratch your head in wonder at the things that were included.
The scoring system needs to be built around utility (and obviously
different for each class of install). Joe User on his desktop machine
isn't likely to require inn or Zope. Dennis Developer probably has
little use for fax software on his build box.
When you trust somebody else to give you ``the best of'' you are
dealing not only with the quality of the software involved, but the
opinion of the person(s) who did the scoring.
--
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( ) * Anton Graham
/v\ / <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
/( )X
(m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541
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