DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Making DSL a little easier
This is a very interesting topic. Thanks for your detailed reply Robert. It always comes down to people preferring different things I guess. I will have to use the hotkeys as I am sure they are much quicker.
Personally I do find looking at icons much easier than pages of filenames...it depends what you're used to I guess.
MyDSL is very elegant and quick...the way you can delete dsls from the root / they don't load is very easy. Hats off to you there.
I didn't mean to start a big debate over my little comment! I did find though e.g. I wanted to install real player. Is this possible? How do I find realplayer?
That's the only reason I mentioned having a Yast like tool ( or Ubuntu use a similar thing where you can search for programs and just install them) - it makes it very easy for a noob that's all. I've learn t how to use apt-get and the repositories...so that's ok...but I struggled at first. I guess it's like driving a car/ you need to learn how to drive before you get going and computers are the same.
It's very unfair of me to suggest these things when I know you have a 50mb limit...big graphical interfaces probably consume so much more room....I keep thinking of these issues with Amiga and workbench..I never touch Directory Opus so using a filemanager is a little new to me - but it can be very quick. I guess we're all used to doing things one way after years of windows
It will be interesting to see what you do in DSL4. DSL is like having Risc OS over again...lean ..fast. Maybe this weekend I'll try and skin it and go back to relive my Acorn days.........ahhhhh
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Most desktop users of the 2 most popular OSs don't really know what a full-blown package and dependency manager is, and don't really want one, even if it exists.
I don't think most Linux users do, either. That's why there's been mass migration from Red Hat and RH-based distros for RPM to Debian for apt and now to Ubuntu since its repositories are more bleeding edge and the tools used by default in Ubuntu are more automagical. And I agree with you that tools like zero-install will likely eventually attract more users.
Linux users increasingly want the same ease as in Windows of just downloading something, double-clicking, and then it installs itself. Windows can do that more transparently because MS has standardized most of the libraries (DLLs) that things need; anything with an odd library will add it to the system during installation. In contrast, Linux has disparate libraries which is why there's a certain frequency of encountering dependency issues. Otherwise, there's really very little difference between installing something in Windows and precompiled binaries from apt-get, yum, slapt-get, etc.
I can't agree with you that advanced users who need control will choose tools like apt that install precompiled binaries. Some indeed do, but most will continue compiling from source themselves.blip: see mydsl
Most don't bother to browse the .info even if they are encountering problems... Extension dependency checks can be very complicated.. Even if you wanted to add that kind of layer to mydsl, there wouldn't be enough manpower to moderate it (and the focus has been already stated). However, a search kind of function would be nice... which may be easier for users than to manually go through each list, or using web/ftp browser.
When you talk of "yast" I believe you are talking about the frontend (to yum?) in particular... as synaptic is for apt.
About text and icons: pesonally I'm flexible with both, I have some machines set up where it's only icons (i.e. toolbar, or wmdrawer, etc) and some where it's only text (and even some with text/ascii-based "icons").
original here.
