apps choice for Ubuntu and installation choices

Anders Karlsson trudheim at gmail.com
Sun Apr 23 12:01:55 BST 2006


On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 03:24 +0200, Magnus Blomfelt wrote:
> Anders Karlsson wrote:
[snip] 
> > That is what 'tasksel' has been doing for yonks.
> Yes. (screenshot here, http://henning.cco-ev.de/gallery/tasksel/debcc6)

Looks very similar (clone?) to the tool used in Feodora.

> > I don't quite follow what you are attempting to do here, or what the
> > purpose would be. Can you elaborate on this please?
> 
> OK, I will give it a try, please tell me if you want more details...
> 
> 1. Installation
> As Matt was saying it would not fit with the minimal installation.
> However, what I was thinking about before Matts posts, was that being
> able to have a reasonably easy third option between server and full
> desktop could sometimes be useful.
> An example would be my old computer not connected to the Internet,
> then I would simply select not to install any Internet applications.
> Some company might select to not install any games.

That can be done by installing the minimal install and then selecting
having a selection of meta-packages. The problem is, do we want a few
thousand meta-packages just to cater for all the possible and
'unpossible' variations people conceivably would come up with. Your best
bet would be to follow the OEM customisation path.

> 2. Post Install
> Since an install option wasn't feasible, I thought it would be nice
> for me to be able to uninstall applications as a group since it would
> atleast be a time saver.
> In the example of my old computer above I would uninstall all
> Internet applications (and load it with MAME instead).

You could still do the sensible thing and install minimally and then add
only what you needed. Installing lots and then starting to remove bits
will land you in trouble much more often than installing little and add
as you need to.

> 3. Permissions in 'Users and Groups'
> For instance click a user, select the Properties button and use
> the new tab 'application groups'. This tab could have a check box
> for each of the application groups and deselecting one of them
> would make it impossible for the user to use the installed
> applications included in that application group.
> In the company example above, they might select to not let a certain
> user group use the games group. (The one the boss is not in)

I see what you are after here. I am sure you can do this with chattr (or
what the tool is called). I doubt there is a GUI for it, and you'd have
to do it (presently) for each and every file. That is not to say that a
policy driven UI can not be created to do this.

> All in all my ideas are just an alternative approach to identifying
> large user groups with different needs as suggested further up the
> thread. Instead I thought it would be nice to let users them selves
> identify and select their needs. Most users would probably still use
> the default option, but I think for some this alternative would save
> some time.

The choice should probably not lie with the users but with the SysAdm
IMHO. Users as a whole asks for more privileges than they need, "just in
case you know". ;) I've sat on both sides of that particular fence.

> But hey, this was just me tossing ideas around, if it doesn't fit
> with Ubuntu I respect that. Matt and the other developers know their
> stuff alot more than I do...

Ideas and suggestion are good things. They should be bandied about, as
that is how invention happens. :)

In the case of Ubuntu, at least how I see it, the target audience at the
moment is probably not the corporate desktop where some of your
suggestions would be very useful, but rather home-users where some of
these restriction methods could cause a support nightmare. "I don't know
what I changed, but I can't get to the web or e-mail and it won't let me
change anything or update preferences anymore."

Regards,


-- 
Anders Karlsson <trudheim at gmail.com>
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