build-essential

[James Gregory]

Hi all,

I've just got on the list and got my first install going yesterday (in
qemu! more about that in another email), so apologies if I'm behind the
8-ball here.

On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 10:28 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="B">
> 
> > I think anyone who gets past running email and web browsers will want to
> > install software that is not out in a .deb file sooner or later.
> 
> I don't think that's going to be true for most users, given what's available
> in supported and universe...

Ideally, people would only use what's available as packages. It has been
my experience that anyone coming from another platform will simply not
think about the problem of installing new software as you or I would.
They will go to google, type in 'word processor for linux' or whatever
and find some application which will have a binary tarball and a source
tarball. The new user will just expect that you download this stuff and
walk through some procedure to get it running. Likewise there are a lot
of instructions (including some that I've written. For SHAME) that tell
people to download source and build it. I've seen people with university
educations in computer science who have been using unix based systems
for their whole degree program do this.

Now, that's going to generate problems sooner or later and it could be
argued that it's Ubuntu's responsibility to make the instructions work.
I don't think that's right though; Giving people a gun (compiler, same
diff) with which they can shoot themselves in the foot is not the right
answer. Unless you know what you're doing, installing software this way
is almost certainly going to break stuff sooner or later (and it's
definitely going to be more difficult to get it 'right' than packaged
software).

The compiler as tool for newbie-software-installation argument is not a
strong one. I do see a problem there though. Perhaps the solution to
that particular angle of not having a compiler is to make synaptic (or a
similar tool, I'm not a regular debian/ubuntu user just yet) highly
visible from the standard desktop. I'm thinking an 'Install new
software' option at the bottom of the applications menu. There is
probably a need to make synaptic a touch more friendly on startup, but I
need to think a bit more about how to do that before I go ranting about
it.

It might also be a good idea to have the homepage for mozilla set to
something that can launch synaptic (or have some web interface for
finding and installing new packaged apps). I'm in two minds about that
though because I'm always annoyed when I get a new distro where I have
to manually set google as my homepage. Still, I suspect such a page
would be ignored so it's unlikely to grab the attention of anyone
intending to install new software. I'm also a so-called 'power-user' so
I'm a terrible use-case.

James.

-- 
James Gregory <james at james.id.au>
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