Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Hugo Heden]

On Dec 25, 2007 12:52 AM, Hugo Heden <hugoheden at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 24, 2007 2:44 PM, Reinhard Tartler <siretart at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Carsten Agger <agger at c.dk> writes:
> >
> > > Like in many packages, you can say
> > >
> > > ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
> > >
> > > you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
> > > there any plans to integrate this functionality with synaptic/Add-Remove
> > > for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
> >
> > http://0install.net/ should do exactly what you want.
> >
> > Note that there are no plans to actively support or promote this in
> > ubuntu.
> >
>
> There other attempts (if I understand all this correctly?) to solve
> the Linux Software Installation Problem (LSIP)[1], of which the
> installing-software-as-non-root is part.
>
> o) Glick: http://www.gnome.org/~alexl/glick/ (promising but project is
> currently both young and inactive -- pretty much just a little
> experiment?)
>
> o) klik: http://klik.atekon.de/ and
> http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Klik2 (promising and active. They
> have a lot of thinking going on regarding the difference between the
> "base system" and "applications". However, AFAIK the solution seems to
> depend on a central server for software, which I think is a weakness
> -- software vendors should be able to bundle and publish the software
> themselves -- the most fundamental part of the LSIP)
>
> o) CNR (Click aNd Run): http://cnr.com/
>
> o) And of course, there is getdeb.net, but AFAIK they do not attempt
> to solve the installing-software-as-non-root part of the LSIP.
>
> A little off topic: For more on the LSIP, see Ian Murdocks blog post
> "Software installation on Linux: Today, it sucks" --
> http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388 -- and the rather more hopeful follow-up
> on http://ianmurdock.com/?p=391 .
>
>
> Best regards
> Hugo Heden
>
> [1] "LSIP": Ok, ok, I just made that acronym up (to make the point
> that I seriously think the concept is worth an acronym -- IMHO this
> needs to be worked on in order to fix Bug #1. I've been lurking on
> this list for a year, and I am a little concerned that there is so
> little talk about this.)
>

Oh, let me stress that I do *not* think the situation is any better
with MS Windows, that was *not* the point I was making. I am only
occasionally using MS Windows, and don't really know much about it.
(The latter is also true for Linux.)

Also, there was a short discussion about the LSIP on the Ubuntu Forums
a year ago that I liked:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=330430 . But this is perhaps
getting too off topic.