On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 8:51 PM, Rick Schummer <[email protected]> wrote: > > This feature you described in Linux sounds cool. Will Fedora and Ubuntu > automatically know about a custom app I develop, and where to download it? > Sounds like a sophisticated OS updater, but generically open to all > applications, or close to InstallShield's Update Manager with search > capability. >
Rick: Glad you asked. Every app that you run in Linux is somebody's "custom app." Some developer had an itch to scratch and wrote a custom application - maybe gLabels, or GIMP or Emacs or Vim or SciTE or Mahjongg or Thunderbird - and he/she or some other volunteer went through the trouble of packaging it up for a distribution and publishing it for the world to use. At that point, the application is available for download directly from the "Package Manager" for that application, whether it's the RPM repositories of Fedora or OpenSuse or the deb files for Debian. Unlike Windows or MacOS, where the vendor of the OS is competing for software sales with the developers, the cooperative (and competitive) community of FOSS push to make more applications available from their distro (as long as the app meets their packaging and licensing requirements). Different distros have different assortments of applications available, and because of the open licensing of the software, unrelated third-parties can add your application to distros you've never even heard of. It's a pretty powerful distribution mechanism. Of course, if you're looking for an Open Source application for your particular distro, and you find one that hasn't already been packaged for your distribution (like Dabo, for example), you can very likely install it from source packages. While the process can appear a bit daunting at first, it turns out to be pretty easy in most cases. And if you like the app and want to see it available for your distro, you can quite likely nominate it for inclusion in the distribution and assist in getting it packaged up and "officially" supported. I've been following a thread this very week where Fedora activists are polling the Fedora-users mailing lists for new packages to add: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2009-May/msg00440.html So, the distribution packaging system is open, welcoming and simple. -- Ted Rocheh Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
