Ubuntu PPC 4.10 Installed on new Mac Mini

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> ...Linux is coming into its own, and, the biggest challenges
> facing the Linux world (IMO) are having a standardised app installer
> paradigm,

Yep, I totally agree. There nothing more frustrating than seeing a super
marvelous application that would make you super happy, but not being
able to use it because you have to compile yourself and you don't know
ho, or can't bother; or you have a .deb file, but you have missing
dependencies or whatever problem.
Not sure how we should do that though. Either a more complex "synaptic",
with az high-level GUI that would show only end user applications, and
not thousands of packages and system related files, source code, headers
etc, and get pre-compiled apps from the Ubuntu repositories. 
Or, if we ("we" as in  Linux world, not just Ubuntu) should take a more
universal approach. That is, people would click on the tar.gz file of
the source code, in the download page of the website of program
blah-blah, then the system would auto-detect what depencies need to be
retrieved, then everything is compiled on the machine.
This way, people/users would not be restricted by what apps are in the
Ubuntu reposotiry, and could be garanteed to be able to install any
program from the source code. 
This would save the Ubuntu team from having to spend hundreds of hours
compiling thousands of packages on Ubuntu, for each platform, and do it
all over again every 6 month, to update the version.
I don't know what's best. Compiling from source gives you access to more
apps, or lets you use the most recent version of your favorite app, but
you always run the risk that the compiling process may fail, for
whatever reason. On the other hand, maintaining a Ubuntu repository must
be extremely time consuming, but your are 100% garanteed that it will
work, because it has been compiled by Ubuntu, on Ubuntu, the exact same
Ubuntu that you are using (talking of stable releases of course).
Maybe we could use both systems. That is, use the repository for all the
common apps that most un-experienced/most users are likely to be wanting
to use, stuff as much more as we can, then, if your application is not
in the repository, you could start a "wizard" that will assit you in
compiling your application from the source code, sort out dependencies,
download them, compile them etc.
What do you think ? Is Ubuntu thinking about something like this, albeit
for the very distant future ?
When looking at Nvu the other day, I came accross a commercial Linux
distro named "Linspire" (www.linspire.com). I think it's a commercial,
desktop only, KDE based distro, mainly in the USA, that mimics Windows
to drag joe public to Linux. They have a system called "CNR" to ease the
installation of software. Don't know what it is exactly, what it does
how it works, but maybe it's a start ??


> having a polished and flawless GUI

Yes, Ubuntu and Gnome certainly help a lot in this dept. ! :o)

> and having _one_ stable and _predictable_ platform

Ohhh, yes... "stable"...stable...stable... :o))))

> for which to develop for a few years. App quality will inevitably follow.

Yep, agree here too. If we make it easy for people to develop good
programs, then make it easy for users to install these programs, mix all
that in a stable and polished Ubuntu (for example ;o), Linux will rule
the world in no time ! :o)))

> Since I haven't had to reconfigure stuff I imagine that an "official"
> upgrade to Hoary may also absolve you of the need to reconfigure .conf
> files.

Ah, that's very good news then :o)

Vince