Gary Brown <[email protected]> writes: > There are a couple of points in the article with which I disagree: > > 1. Updates - I find the synaptic utility and the update tools to be of > much greater use than windows update because you can update everything not > just the OS and your office suite. > > 2. Installing software - Synaptic, and the central software repository in > general, rocks. There are more software packages included with Ubuntu than > most users would ever need. They cover a > wide array of uses from entertainment to productivity AND, in the vast > majority of cases, searching the internet and downloading an installer is the > foreign way of doing things. It took me a while > to get this one, but now that I have it, I love it and Windows will most > likely never have it.
*cough* http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2009/01/21/is-microsoft-working-on-a-software-center-for-windows *cough* :) As for the installation, most people are conditioned to go to the software producer to get the software they produce. They're not wrong, that's pretty logical. Asking some effectively third party (the OS/distro) for the software is … counter-intuitive. This is something a group like FreeDesktop.Org should be helping to solve. A way for a software producer to provide a link/file that the distros basically agree upon that will Do The Right Thing: either automagically search in synaptic, or select between the appropriate .{rpm,yum,sh}, &c. I've seen "solutions" like autopackage and zero install, but they are fail. A hybrid installer/updater that provides system services to keep packages installed, uninstallable and up-to-date is becoming one of the next big (overdue) Operating System features. -- ...jsled http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo $...@${b}
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