Migration to Dapper

[Michael V. De Palatis]

> > My own observations tell me that the vast majority of users just use
> > apt. If it's not in the Ubuntu repositories, they don't install it.
> 
> That's my feeling - though I had no data to back it up.  I'm reasonably
> adventurous, but I just don't see the point, most of the time, to install
> anything that isn't prepackaged.

In most cases, I agree with you.

While *almost* everything you ever need is available as a deb
package in some form or another (whether it be via a third party or
directly from, in this case, Ubuntu), there are some things that
aren't "mainstream" enough for packaging to occur. If, say, you are
developing some sort of scientific software, then what incentive do
you have to make a Debian/Ubuntu-specific package for it if that's
not what you use? Unless the community is so large that someone will
do it, it's not going to happen.

Another important issue is licensing. As I've mentioned before, I
think the mess with OpenSSL is ridiculous. It means that, for
example, I can't use mail-notification because UT's mail server
requires that I authenticate with SSL (which I would do whether or
not it was required, provided that at least it was available). Thus,
until these issues are sorted out (I personally consider it to be a
non-issue with zealotry abounding), users are forced in such
situations to use a non-deb package (usually source).

So really, my only point to this long diatribe is that there are
many times that using packages that aren't prepackaged can become
necessary. But, overall, the wonderful thing about Debian/Ubuntu is
that when you don't have something, in theory all you need to do is
apt-get it -- And that is why there's usually "no point" in
installing something that's not prepackaged.

Mike