[ale] Linux for "normal" people?

[Michael Mealling]

On Tue, 2004-11-16 at 12:06, Nathan J. Underwood wrote:
> I downloaded the ubuntu live cd and have been tinkering with it.  The 
> first thing that I noticed was that it seemed to be a bit faster than 
> knoppix.  The second thing I noticed was that it had a very clean and 
> easy to use 'feel' to it.  I've not had the time to do an install yet, 
> but if the install version is like the live cd, I may have found a new 
> distro that I'll be using for *normal* people.

I've found most 'normal' people are able to grok most of linux but the
largest issue seems to be package management. Sure, things like Yum and
APT are fine for maintaining existing packages, but they really don't
help with finding new ones and installing them or with dealing with
things that aren't packaged as either a .deb or RPM. That's why Gentoo
looked interesting for a few minutes. 

'normal' people want painless (that doesn't mean 'intelligent') 
application (not 'package') management. Some things that I think
packages need on linux to enable this:

* the concept of package 'suites' (i.e. a suite contains all "office"
apps such as Open Office, Dia, etc) 

* package aliases so I don't have to know _exactly_ what the package is
called before I can get it with yum or apt-get. I've had to go find the
rpm in order to query it for its name before I can tell yum to install
it and its dependencies.

* A _standard_ way for CVS checkouts, source tarballs and binary
tarballs to co-exist with RPM and APT...

Sorry.... just venting a little...

-MM