On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 11:08 AM, Alexander Ploumistos <alex.ploumistos@gmail.com> wrote:
2014-12-28 15:02 GMT+02:00 Richard Hughes <hughsient@gmail.com>:GNOME PackageKit is still available (and maintained upstream) and is
what I use for installing things like mingw packages that I need for
development. Just type "Packages" into the dash and gnome-software
will install it for you :)Oh, that was so nice! After typing the root password to install software, I got another prompt with "The software is not from a trusted source". Is that a rawhide issue?
How are user queries correlated to the package suggestions in the dash? I do not always get what I would expect, e.g. when I type IDE, I get Anjuta, Gnote and Rosegarden, with 3gp I get Frogr, Banshee, Xnoise and mpc yields nothing.
And a third, irrelevant question: has the "hot corner" been disabled or is it because I run f22 in a VM?
* p7zip, being a command-line tool, is something "normal users" should never need. If Archive Manager needs it as a plugin, it can install it with PackageKit if it's not detected, or it should be a dependency in the RPM if Archive Manager doesn't support that. Hunting down a magic package name to install is not an acceptable user experience, and not something we should encourage or optimize for. Alternatively, it could include an appdata file so that it's listed as an Archive Manager plugin in GNOME Software, but I think that would be non-ideal in this case, since users should never have to worry about having the right packages installed to unzip an archive.So this means that a default Workstation installation should have a large number of non-graphical programs installed by default, or that the various applications will be compiled with every possible dependency, e.g. Archive Manager will pull in every possible compression/decompression back end?
* But if we're wrong, and normal users really do need to install packages, then we should probably include a graphical package manager so that users can actually find packages. I submit that improving GNOME Packages (aka gpk-application, the thing we installed by default until F20), something that's already used by other distros (notably Debian), would be a better use of our time than working on a Fedora-specific solution like yumex. Especially considering that yum is not going to be installed by default in F21.And that could lead to more confusion, at least from the "normal user" perspective, having both a package manager and a software center...
The question is: is it more confusing for novice users to include a graphical package manager by default, or to not include it? We're only talking about novice users here: an experienced user can always take 20 seconds to install his preferred graphical package manager with GNOME Software, so we don't care about what the experienced user wants for himself.This is not an easy question to answer.
When I set up a computer for a "normal user" I ask them what they want to do with it, so I configure third-party repositories, install all the packages that offer the functionality they expect, which usually includes several proprietary applications and drivers as well.
I vaguely remember filling out a wizard-like questionnaire on the first run of a distribution, that collected some hardware and user information. There were questions like "Do you know what a window manager is?", "Do you compile your own programs and if yes how often?", etc.. Perhaps we could put together something similar to help us answer that sort of questions and combine it with the council's survey proposal. I could help with that and I could also reach out to some of my "test subjects".