After reading some threats in this forum, I had the impression that newbies very often have difficulties installing new software. By accident, someone else pointed me to this
website which is a joke, obviously.
However, one thing mentioned there attracted my attention:
Quote:
Linux Update: is a Web site that makes it easy to download the latest software updates for your specific computer. No more untarring and gunzipping problems thanks to new Graphical Point-And-Click RPM Management.
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Ok, this is nothing really new, since apt-get, rpm-apt, emerge, and maybe other software is basically able to do something like this. But you need to know how to do this!
For example, a few days ago, I answered a post from someone who wanted to install tarballs on a debian system! Additionally, when lurking into rpm-based systems I found that
freshrpms.net might be somewhat confusing if you don't use rpm-apt.
Thus, what do you think of a
Point-and-Click Installation Management?
Theoretically, it might work like this: A software project provides not only tarballs for compilation but additionally binaries for different distributions. AFAIK, this is impossible for a project since they don't have every distribution installed. However, at least commercial distributions might be able to provide an online build system for their distributions.
Assume this would be possible for the moment. Then, a project might integrate a button on their website stating: "Install"
When a user hints the button, a decription file (in XML format, maybe?) gets downloaded which contains filenames, dependencies, hashcodes and possible online sources for downloading the packages. In fact, this should work a little bit like eDonkey or Bit-Torrent.
Now assume, a little wizard starts, asking "This will install XZY onto your computer. Do you like to proceed? -> Yes, No, More info".
In case one hints "Yes", the system checks its sources-list first, tries to fulfill necessary dependencies, downloads the correct binary package, and installs it.
In case, there is no binary because the project maintainers didn't think of it or distributions didn't provide an online build system, the software could be able to download the tarball and necessary build-dependecies, make a package info by default values or with a little wizard, compiles the binary and installs it together with its runtime dependecies.
Done.
There is a distribution called
Lindows providing a similar service already. However, they don't abstract from various distributions. Additionally, there are some wizards like these already available, for example
RPM Wizard or
Autopackage. Thus, it's maybe not to hard to bind these things together.
If major software sites like
freashmeat.net or
sourceforge.net would agree to actually incorporate a "Install" button into their pages, it would be a nice start. And less "how do I install" or "why doesn't it work" questions in a number of forums, including here.
Another advantage might be that linux magazines might be able to use this on CDs! They are not able to provide binaries for all major distributions without reducing the number of software to a few. With the system, users of other distributions don't need to care about that. One might eventually think of adding CDs contents automatically to the sources.list if the user wants to.
What do you think ?