I've thought about the "rpm hell" bit before. I notice that some commercial apps (like Opera) seem to bundle everything required into a single tarball and say "just install this". Do they achieve this by statically linking in all the required libraries, and is this what is done in Windows ? I feel that it IS asking too much of non-technical users to "install x and y before installing z", especially when installation of x.0.2 gives the message "conflicts with x.0.1" or requires installation of v and w. We techos tend to forgot the little glitches that occur which spell badhair day to a non-technical user. There IS QA in the Free / Opensource world. But I would agree that the Linux software install process, logical as it may seem to a computer professional, is not up to the needs of the non-technical user. my .05 c Rod On Sun, 2004-12-05 at 14:57 +1100, Rick Welykochy wrote: > Matthew Palmer wrote: > > > On Sun, Dec 05, 2004 at 10:55:48AM +1100, Rick Welykochy wrote: > > > >>john gibbons wrote: > >> > >> > >>>I would like to raise the goal post for Linux software interface > >>>developers from 'intuitional' to 'bloody obvious'. I am getting some > >>>frustration off my chest after trying to download some Linux software > >>>for the first time and get it up and running. According to the > >>>directions it was easy. My question is : for whom? > >> > >>Welcome to a world where there is no QA, where there is no standard > >>installation process and where your very mettle will be tested to the > >>limit when you install FOSS. > > > > > > What the *hell* are you talking about? Plenty of F/OSS projects take their > > Quality Assurance very seriously, with regression testing, bug tracking, > > pre-release testing, and release planning. I think the GNOME project, for > > instance, would be very startled to hear that there is not QA in their > > development process. As for standard installation process, I can apt-get > > install most anything I want, and it'll do the same things every time. I > > can't even get MSIs to play that nicely. Mettle testing is in no way > > specific to F/OSS -- computers in general are what does it to you. > > My apologies, Matthew. Allow me to rephrase what upon second reading appears > to be a rather sweeping generalisation. > > Welcome to a world where there are varying levels of QA in relation to > installation procedures, ... etc. > > It would appear that john gibbons has run into an installation with very > low or non-existent QA. > > Standard installation? Well, if you use deb, you can enjoy one form of > standard > installation. If you run RH, enjoy another standard. I've been through RPM > hell enough times to know how "wild west" the installation process can > become. And I've read of apt-get hell from others. Then we get into Configure; > make; make install and the variations therein ... most times it works, > sometimes > it really don't. And finally, there is the misery of downloading a binary > only to find it doesn't quite "fit" into your lib scheme. > > I think we are in agreement that this is by no means exclusive to FOSS, > and that proprietary software has its share of installation fsckups. > > > cheers > rickw > > > -- > _________________________________ > Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services > > Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is > the "most reliable Windows ever." To me, this is like saying that asparagus > is "the most articulate vegetable ever." > -- Dave Barry > -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Brought to you by a penguin, a gnu and a camel
-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
