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Topic: Making DSL a little easier

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roberts

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Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: June 26 2007,16:44

First let me say that DSL 4.0 is not going to be Rox. I have already posted the many reasons why I have made this decision. Yet, I also posted that I will be trying to address some of the issues of ease of use.

I know that doing this, I will never please everyone. There may be some users who will say that DSL 3.x was the last good version. But I have experienced that before. I recall those who said v0.5.3.1 was the last good one and again v0.7.3. Seems anytime I make major changes there will be those who do not like change.

There is much on-going debate about UI and application centeric versus document centric, icons versus text menus and on and on.

I know that we have some users who currently do not like icons and don't use them. Some boot with no icons and use midnight commander. Some use DSL only at the CLI or only an open xterm. I have tried to build the mydsl infrastructure to support both. DSL will continue to offer these capabilites.

On the otherhand, the current icon system used by DSL is clunky and separate from the file manager. Basic operations work as expected. But many users have to expect a closer integration of these. Having a real desktop, drag and drop support, many and easily maintained associations using mime types. DSL 4.0 will be available soon and tries to support both the existing no icon users and those who expect a more familiar environemnt as just described. And, yes we will still be under 50MB.

As far as package management goes, I have answered this many times. My interest in DSL is as a live CD or emulation of one. As such MyDSL applications are never really installed and thereore no package management is needed, simply reboot or delete from persistent store. MyDSL extensions were never inteneded for a traditional hard drive instalation. My focus and interest has never been a traditional hard drive installation. I know that many will do this and many will force install extensions to such. But that was not the design. Think of it, MyDSL extension, as using a foreign package on a Debian system.

WDef

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Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: June 26 2007,19:18

Sounds like a definitive position there from Robert.

@Lucky13: Thanks for the info, I'm sure all that's correct but it doesn't change my points. Personally I wouldn't consider Windows "Add/remove programs" as package management at all in the full sense that we know it in linux, and afaik developers in windows and Mac usually go out of their way so that things install without the ordinary desktop user having to locate dependencies or even know that these exit. But that's all by the by and probably not worth going into.

roberts

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Posted: June 26 2007,20:44

DSL with MyDSL, as designed, was to make it simple to add/remove applications and without the need of dependency checking or overrunning your installation with extra unwanted packges.

Package management by using MyDSL with live CD or frugals is really as simple as file managment. That is why the prompt if you downloaded and dynamically loaded an extension onto the ramdisk, the system prompts you to copy the extension(s) to a persistent store.

When using the boot tme autoloading, the "removal" of a "package" is also just as easy. Simple delete the file from the mydsl directory on the persistent storage device. It really is as simple as file managment.

lucky13

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Posted: June 26 2007,21:22

Quote

...afaik developers in windows and Mac usually go out of their way so that things install without the ordinary desktop user having to locate dependencies or even know that these exit.

I thought that's the reason for various Linux packaging systems (apt/deb, rpm, tgz, etc.). People freak out when that doesn't work right and they have to track down dependencies on their own.

--------------
"It felt kind of like having a pitbull terrier on my rear end."
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WDef

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Joined: Sep. 2005

Posted: June 27 2007,11:22

Sorry Lucky but I've lost track of what your point is.

Mine are these (to reiterate):

1) dsl does not need a full-blown package management system with dependency management and autofetching.

2) Most desktop users of the 2 most popular OSs don't really know what a full-blown package and dependency manager is, and don't really want one, even if it exists.

3) I predict that linux desktop systems aimed at basic users are likely to dump package management in the existing sense in favor of self-contained apps using things lilke Klik or Zero Install in the not-to-distant future. As Robert has said, DSL pioneered this with the uci format (following RiscOS, apparently).

Advanced users will continue to use yum, apt etc. because they need that level of control.

That's all I have say on this :=)

37 replies since June 09 2007,17:02

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