Binary incompatibility of Linux distributions

[Derek Broughton]

anthony baldwin wrote:

> Graham Todd wrote:
>> On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:10:21 +0200
>> Odd <iodine at runbox.no> wrote:
>> 
>>> People still buy boxed software in your country?
>>> Synaptic is good, but not great. It could be better.
>>> Also, the fact that there is so much software there could
>>> be intimidating to newbies.
>>> I'd like to have an alternative web front-end for it,
>>> with more extensive descriptions, screenshots and filtering methods.
>>> In it's current form, it's not particularly user-friendly.
>> 
>> Reply taken to Sounder. Please reply there.

This started out OT, but it's become a discussion of specific shortcomings 
of Ubuntu software.  That seems perfectly proper for this list.
> 
> One thing I can't figure out is why the home page for each app isn't
> always listed in the synaptic descriptions, so one could just click on
> it and see the apps home page to learn more about the app.
> That would, IMHO, be a really good idea.

iirc, there's no requirement for such a thing in the Debian package 
specification.  Still, it would be easy enough to insist (or at least 
strongly encourage) Ubuntu packages have a homepage URL, and also have the 
package application make all links in the description clickable.

-- 
derek