Ubuntu and screen savers.... :-/

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Hiya Duncan,

> Vince, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Some of us do not have 
> broadband internet connections available at a reasonable price. Some of 
> us do not even have a broadband infrastructure yet! Some of us have to 
> rely on slow analogue dialup connections. 

I fully understand, I am not on dial-up, but my "broadband" connection
is limited to only 64Kbps, which is only marginally faster than
dial-up ! :-O :o(
I took me exactly 24 hours to downaload the ISO image file for Warty !
So I fully understand what you mean...

> It is not realistic for us to  download any package we like at the click of a finger. 

I never said that ! :o(  I said it should be put in Synaptic, I didn't
say you would have to download it ! There are 1,000 packages on the
Ubuntu CD, you could just put the package there and Synaptic would
install it in a second, no need to install it from the network !

For example, the first time I installed Ubuntu, it took me many many
hours, to download all the prgrams I wanted. All in all, about 200
packages adding up to 250MB ! 
Needless to say I wouldn't be very happy if I had to do it all over
again every time I have to re-install Warty !
Bit no need to be unhappy duncan, look, all the packages I downloaded
are put by Synaptic in /var/cache/apt/archive. So when I want to
re-install Ubuntu (for whatever reason), I just copy that folder into
my /home folder. Then, once I have re-installed Warty, it's me only
litteraly seconds to re-install all my packages/programs !!! :o)))
I will never have to download anything ever again, all the .deb packages
are on my disk, you can re-use them time and time again ! :o)

> For such as us, the availability of many options and choices on 
> the base distribution is a desirable thing.

Honnestly, downloading a screen saver takes only a minute or two even
with dial-up !

Also, for bigger apps, maybe it will take an hour or two, but then is
that really a problem ? You don't need it NOW. It's normally sometihing
you have been thinking for some time, maybe several weeks or month, so
waiting 2 more hours will not hurt ! ;o)

Also, more generally, installing an operating system is something that
is a major event for a computer, which is only supposed to happen once
(all being well, for a normal end user), so I don't really have problem
if it takes all day to set it up properly and retrieve all packages.
When I am a user, I expect say OpenOffice to start as quickly as
Gnumeric or Abiword (one day maybe), but when I am in the shoes of the
"system administrator" ;-) then I know what to expect, and doing things
right is the only goal, time is pretty irrelevant.
Some people here will probably have much more extensive experience than
me on the subject, but, I worked for only a month for 'Bull', who build
UNIX servers and mainframes. The machines I was working one were "tiny",
only a single 42U cabinet with a node or two, 16 CPUs max, a disk array
or two, yet this small machines took 30 minutes to boot, and a bout a
week to build and set up/configure/test. And my collegue who were
working on larger machines, say the length of a living room, said it
took about 3 HOURS to boot !
So, this has taught me to be patient when building a Unix system...
Now when I am using Linuw on my machine, I still have the same state of
mind. I don't rush things. 

Maybe you could ask Ubuntu to do like Mandrake... ship 7 or more CD,
with all the packages on them !!!
I think Ubuntu wants to stick to the 'single CD' approach. Still, if
repositories contains "only" a few GigaBytes of data, then, they could
put it all on a CD, well, DVD I mean. Maybe not todays small DVD, but
once we get double sided double layers DVD drives, or those lovely 10
layers discs (is that still being developped ?), then Ubuntu should be
able to put the entire repositories on a single disc.... :o)

> I would rather spend my entire life getting to know half of Linux 
> than spending the same time being denied  such an opportunity.

No contest. :o)


Regards,

Vince, happy getting his hands dirty under Linux's hood...