The 5th preview release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake is out on the mirrors. As usual, there are both install and live CD's for PowerPC, x86, and x86-64. "We are now in the final stages of Dapper Drake development. Everything is stabilizing, and Ubuntu 6.04 will certainly be a top-notch professional OS. Now that all of the lower level improvements have been made, it is time to close the hood and rub on a coat of wax. With Flight 5 comes a new and improved Human look-and-feel, a few new GUI power tools, and much more." Update: Screenshot tour.
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Member since:2005-12-31
> OK, I see some similarity. But the RPM gives much
> greater freedom. You can list the files in an rpm and
> even view the scripts that show what the RPM will do to
> your system.
> [...]
> But with a Windows setup.exe, what can you do but just
> trust it?
What can you do and just trust a setup script if you don't have the expertise to understand it?
This problem needs a radically different approach. The OS should be able to auto-check whether installation screws it and act accordingly. Of course, this implies that a package may not contain installation scripts written in a turing-equivalent language, and so on.
Member since:2005-07-10
KenJackson,
Re: "OK, I see some similarity. But the RPM gives much greater freedom. You can list the files in an rpm and even view the scripts that show what the RPM will do to your system. There is even rpm2cpio that lets you extract individual files and examine them."
Maybe I should of worded it differently as I wasn't getting into that much detail. Though package managers such as YAST are doing what they should do and that is checking for dependencies, conflicts and digital signatures. Yes it's nice to be able to extract the binary and look at the source code but not everyone wants to do this. My reasons for migrating over to Linux wasn't so I could read lines of code.
Anyway, what I was referring to was ease of installation when using binary "packagename.rpm or packagename.deb" on Linux similar to ease of installation of "packagename.exe" on Windows. Compiling from source or using a Terminal (BASH, CLI) to execute a command to install software is not what most consumers want.
As long as Ubuntu Linux provides ease of installation and use then it should be a good distribution for those migrating from Windows to Linux. Though if it falls into the "geeks only" catagory as some Linux distributions do then it will be less attractive to consumers. After all not every user using Linux is the person installing the distribution or even knows anything about using a Terminal. This is why I like companies such as Novell and Mandriva that continually strive to make migration easier. As long as other Linux developers keep this in mind then Linux adoption will continue to grow.
Edited 2006-03-12 18:54
Member since:
2005-07-18
I'm sure most of us would agree using a binary package (ie: packagename.rpm) is similar to using "packagename.exe" for Windows.
OK, I see some similarity. But the RPM gives much greater freedom. You can list the files in an rpm and even view the scripts that show what the RPM will do to your system. There is even rpm2cpio that lets you extract individual files and examine them.
rpm -qlp package.rpm
rpm -qp --scripts package.rpm
rpm2cpio package.rpm | cpio ...
But with a Windows setup.exe, what can you do but just trust it?