Difference Between Automatix and EasyUbuntu (was Re: Newbie Wurkshop)

[Evan Leibovitch]

>> Please, lets keep seperate the issue of IRC and Automatix. The larger
>> issue at hand is actually third party repos. If creators of those
>> repos are not careful, and most of them are not, they can easily mess
>> up a system when it tries to upgrade to the next version of Ubuntu.
>>     
Then IMO there should be some specific discussion on Ubuntu websites of
this issue.

The fact is that people _do_ want to load stuff like the Microsoft web
fonts, win32codecs, decss, and other stuff that isn't on the core Ubuntu
(or Canonical) sites.

I'm not impressed with Automatix as an installer, it certainly seems
needlessly redundant to someone using Adept (not to mention the fact
that it forces a lot of otherwise-unnecessary GNOME cruft onto Kubuntu
systems). But it's used, because it looks appealing and there is no
definitive information from the community with which to make an informed
choice.

Searching for "plf", "easyubuntu", "win32codec" or "decss" on ubuntu.com
provides zero hits, not even a pointer to where to find other
information. (Searching for "win32" takes you to the certification
program, of all things!)

>> For Feisty the dist-upgrader will try and work around some of these
>> situations, but not all of them can be done so. So please, consider
>> very wisely when you tell people to use any third party stuff. I say
>> use EasyUbuntu because of their devs are also MOTUs and thus have an
>> inside view of some of the breakage these third party repos have done
>>     
This is very valuable information, if more people were aware of it
Automatix might never be used.

When I used Mandriva the answer was easy to find and do; add PLF to your
repositories using the "easyurpmi" tool. I wasn't expecting the answer
to be so much fuzzier, and so much harder to find, in Ubuntu-land. Two
of the main solutions, EasyUbuntu and Automatix, are extra pieces of
software -- why do I need these just to find an appropriate repo?

Can there not be a semi-definitive Wiki page somewhere regarding the
recommended contents of one's source.list file? To someone new to
Ubuntu, just figuring out to add "universe" and "multiverse" (and why to
do this for a newbie) is non-trivial. It would be nice for people to
know whether adding the Skype repo has been known to break any other
packages.

It doesn't help that there is conflicting information on whether PLF
support for Ubuntu is current or not.
http://plf.zarb.org/ says it's down but
http://packages.freecontrib.org/plf/ looks quite alive

How well-respected is the information at ubuntuguide.org?
How about http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/doc/plf ?

Can you see why it's so easy to do the wrong thing?

>
> Does EasyUbuntu use 3rd party repos, or does it just automate the process of installing things like codecs?
How can one separate the two? Since the restricted packages can't be
found on the official servers, _any_ system -- automated or manual -- 
for installing them must somehow point people at unofficial repos.

If there was at least documented -- SOMEWHERE -- on the Ubuntu site
indicating things such as EasyUbuntu or freecontrib.org it would prevent
people from needing to Google the information -- and then finding
themselves open to every little idea of how to do things.

- Evan