So what is really in my universe?

[Daniel Robitaille]

> I guess what I am trying to say is maybe ubuntu would benefit to have
> more updated packages, as it is more a desktop distro than anything
> else.

I agree. From my own experience, and looking at the type of questions
that keeps coming back on the list, it seems that the user
expectations from a modern Linux distro need to include a certain set
of packages  and in Ubuntu's case that includes a non-zero number of
packages from the mostly unsupported-Universe.  I'm sure Ubuntu's
people keep track of download stats for their universe and have a good
idea of what people requests from there (I would be very interested to
see the top packages from universe; and that would also be a good way
of discovering packages of Debian I don't know)

I'm afraid as the average users keep installing universe packages, or
mix up different repositories (Debian or other) with their Ubuntu
installation, things are bound to break, and on the long run their
user experience with Ubuntu will be less than if they had stuck with
Debian's Sarge and its supported "universe".  And  when they start
"repairing "things", they will be in the gray zone between Ubuntu
support ("It's in Universe thus unsupported"), and Debian support
("It's not Debian, it's Ubuntu") and that only lead to more
frustrations.

The solution is obviously less universe and more main in future
releases, or maybe a more frequent re-sync of Ubuntu's universe with
Debian's  packages.  Essentially with Ubuntu's 6-month schedule,  you
mostly get support on your universe only every 6 months or so  at
dist-upgrade time. Is that enough for your average user?