Aptitude installed by default on 13.10?

[Brett]

Seeing as this isn't dying anytime soon I'll jump in.

> Freeing them from what, learning? Granted, the average user isn't
> interested in learning but they would be free to reject the opportunity
> if they so chose. *That's* freedom.
>

There is nothing - *nothing* that is stopping anyone from installing 
whatever they want on Ubuntu. Canonical are doing the *smart* 
engineering decision and officially supports *one* tool that gets the 
job done. And the few people that disagree with the tool are more than 
welcome to hop on the servers graciously hosted by Canonical to download 
other tools.

I'm shocked that people get their panties in a bunch over this 'give me 
more choice!' issue since, as stated before, *one* default program that 
gets the job done has always been an Ubuntu policy.

> I had dumped Ubuntu and gone back to Debian, mostly because of Marvelous
> Mark's autocratic attitude. Just recently decided to try Ubuntu again to
> see what had changed. After reading the attitude that, at least, some of
> the devs display here about determining for the user what's best for
> him/her, I guess I'll settle in with Debian and just lurk on this list.
>

So what do you want in an OS? A 16-DVD installer of Ubuntu so that 
everyone will be just so happy that we have every single program ever 
installed? God forbid we deprive those poor souls of choice. Let's ask 
if they want auto-fsck enabled, or automount (because some users won't 
want their USB drives automounted, how uncivilized!).

I'm shocked that people can have this kind of though-process. People 
just want to use their goddamn computers - even something as simple as 
'what search engine would you like to use?' distracts and complicates 
the computing experience - Just look at Windows. Watch users get so 
confused when Windows has eight million dialogues asking users what they 
want to do. There's a delicate balance between KDE's 
option's-galore-insanity and Gnome's brink-of-stupidity-simplifications. 
And Ubuntu's currently the only OS that is sane enough to *mostly* see 
this balance (sadly, they're still pulled back by Gnome's methodical 
destruction of their frameworks).

FYI, I'm not a Canonical member nor an Ubuntu member, so don't take my 
words as official.