Linked by Gary Rennie on Thu 8th Jan 2009 21:06 UTC
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Member since:
2008-07-15
At the risk of getting off topic, I'll address your points.
Well, usually if someone doesn't know how to download Windows software, they go to the store and ask the friendly (or sometimes not so friendly) salesman there what software will do what they want. He gives them a CD, they follow the instructions, which usually amounts to popping the CD into the drive and clicking next a few times. Sometimes it also involves typing a product key which, usually, is printed right on the CD case. Wow, how very, very difficult that was.
Who says they can't use synaptic? But what happens if the piece of software they need isn't in the package repositories? You apt fans always forget that part. What do they do then? Because they can't go ask the friendly people at Best Buy for help now, and they're not going to know how the hell to install something from source. What if they need the latest Openoffice.org to read their co-worker's documents properly--yes, this can and will happen? You really think the average computer user wants to follow the steps of removing the currently installed packages, downloading the tar.gz, extracting it, and then installing the debs or RPMs? Tell me then, which is easier, to do that or to install Openoffice by clicking next a few times, as you would in Windows? Or dragging it to the Applications folder as you would in OS X? Come on now, which is easier?
Package management isn't the issue in and of itself, save for the compatibility issues we're probably all familiar with on occasion. But it's what to do when the repositories don't have what you need that's the issue, and here, I'm afraid, every Linux distro falls flat. There are some promising projects out there for this, but none of them seem to be embraced by any of the major distros.