Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Thu 22nd Feb 2007 23:24 UTC, submitted by Andrzej Ptak
There are currently at least five popular ways of installing software in GNU/Linux. None of them are widely accepted throughout the popular distributions. This situation is not a problem for experienced users - they can make decisions for themselves. However, for a newcomer in the GNU/Linux world, installing new software is always pretty confusing. The article tries to sum up some of the recent efforts to fix this problem and examine the possible future of packaging software in GNU/Linux.
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Member since:
2006-10-08
"Have we have this conversation before but i'll say again. I'd rather use something like synaptic package manager than go looking around the net for looking for software, what is the problem?"
It's because most novce Linux users have migrated from some "Windows" and think using Google is the way to install software. Some of them have problems to accept the easyness of having a built in solution from their OS distribution that does the job for them.
"Besides alot of software what you need is installed anyway on most distros, so don't need to go outside the package manager."
The usual home user should be satisfied with the programs coming along with KDE. In fact, KDE comes with more applications you don't use than you use. :-) If that's not enough, there are apt, yum, yast etc. For example, even PC-BSD has a "dull mode" packaging system (called PBI) - no, it's not dull! In fact, it's great if you're willing to accept having more disk space used in order to completely avoid entering the "dependency hell".
As it's true for most free software, it will be packaged sooner or later for the respective Linux distribution. So there's no need for the average user to "./configure && make install", he just needs to know where the icon of his package manager is located in order to deal with installed software.