On Sat, 2006-04-15 at 03:05 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
On 4/15/06, Michael J Knox <michael(a)knox.net.nz> wrote:
> Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > Is it just me or is there no GUI to make use of Yum available from the
> > CD installtion? If so, would the GUI be preferable for people not
> > comfortable with using the command line ?
>
> There is "yumex" but its in extras and does require to install it from a
> shell. However, once its installed, you're set.
>
> Michael
>
That's what I thought. Don't get me wrong, I prefer using the command
line myself. But doesn't having to install yumex via the console, in
order to not have to use the console (esp. in the case of newbies)
kinda take away from the whole point?
I say this because there seems to be a perception outside of Fedora
that we (Fedora) has no package management, far less a GUI for the
package management. And I see this on public tech forums. (from
supposed geeks)
For the first few releases, Fedora didn't have a good built-in GUI for
software management. The {system,redhat}-config-packages tool acted in
the manner you were talking about earlier in this thread -- i.e. it
worked only with the shipped distro CDs, and lost functionality as you
updated the system. The up2date tool worked to supplant a lot of this
functionality, but was broken by FC4; fortunately yum solved a lot of
problems and people naturally migrated to it.
Is there any particular reason why yumex does not come on the
install
media? I think it is fair to say that people new to Fedora (or linux
for that matter) would appreciate that.
My take on it, part empirical and part opinion, is that its GUI is
poorly designed, too complex for new users. It does expose a lot of
useful yum features, which is why many experienced users like it. It is
simply too confusing for a new user, though, and I'm pretty sure it's
not very adherent to the GNOME HIG. (The pirut and/or pup tools might
have specific HIG problems too, but they seem better designed in that
respect at first blush.) Plus, yumex duplicates a lot of the
functionality in pirut and pup, so by definition that kind of strikes it
from being considered for Core, AIUI.
And on a side note, Fedora could do with some better PR.
Your help is needed in the Marketing group, then:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
--
Paul W. Frields, RHCE
http://paul.frields.org/
gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
Fedora Documentation Project:
http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/