metapackages- Yes , please

[Peter Garrett]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:58:01 +0200
Reinhard Tartler <siretart at gmail.com> wrote:

> The same also goes to the other packages. Again, I don't want to bash
> your and Seveas proposals, in general, I like the idea of having
> convenient meta packages. 

If I might venture an uneducated non-developer's opinion:

I think Dennis's idea is a good one - we daily see on #ubuntu people who are mystified by the process of installing packages needed to achieve what *they* perceive as straightforward aims. This is particularly so for multimedia, as others have noted in this thread.

I can't comment on the technicalities of doing this, but I would encourage developers to think like users in this case. Rather than needing to find a howto, or be directed to a wiki page, people could obtain working solutions by installing one meta-package. Seems like a great idea to me...

Please keep in mind that most new users have no idea what, say, gstreamer0.8-mad is, for example. They just want a simple way to play their mp3 collection - or whatever...

>But with the current proposal, I don't see
> much profit.

*Users* would profit - much easier to find a package called multimedia-foo than something like gstreamer0.8-plugins etc . The description in synaptic should make it clear what the installation will achieve - for example "This package enables the playing of mp3 in totem or rhythmbox and adds support for foo, bar and flurble" and so on.

Just a contribution from a fairly non-technical user, who sees the problems Dennis/Seveas sees.

Peter
-- 

Linux User #343161