[ale] just installed LibreOffice in Linux, should have been easier

[aaron]

> On 03/13/2011 08:06 AM, arxaaron wrote:
>> I love it when people take the most difficult route to
>> a destination and then blame the people who provided
>> the map.


On 2011/03/13, at 20:11 , Ron Frazier wrote:
> I followed the instructions on the LibreOffice website download page.
> How am I supposed to know there are all these easier methods  
> elsewhere?
>

A fair question.

GNU / Linux and FLOSS are about freedom and choice and informed control,
so there are always lots of choices and the easiest or best option  
isn't always
the most obvious.   My snark came from your misguided comparisons to
Mafia$oft windisease, which you seemed to be praising for allowing you
NO freedom and NO choice and NO control.  This was a repeat of your
lopsided comparison of file transfer speeds where you shackled Linux  
to the
leaden weights of a closed source, proprietary, alien file system  
before the
race and then praised the guy that forged and locked those shackles in  
place
for appearing to be faster.

Mac is an expensive Apple. Windisease is a worm ridden, rotten to the  
core
Apple.  Linux is a vast array of fresh and healthy (but sometimes  
tart...) citrus
fruits, free for the picking. Without a major effort to account for  
the weight of
commercial roadblocks and restrictions that are tipping the scales,  
almost
any level of direct comparison across the proprietary divide is  
inaccurate
and unfair.

Still, while your platform comparisons are invalid, your observations  
about
Linux software installation needing simplification have merit.  Not  
surprisingly,
an answer to your concern from the FLOSS community is in the works:

According to the lead article in the Newsdesk section of the April  
2011 Linux
Format magazine, a collaborative developer group that is being  
supported by
most all the major distros has emerged to work on a unified FLOSS  
software
repository and installation API.  The Project Bretzn goals are to  
simplify
software access and installation across all the mainstream Linux distro
choices.  The article notes that if Canonical is willing to make their
"Software Centre" available under a different license, the unified
repository and installation API could be available in as little as 6  
months.

“The current package
managers expose way too much
complexity to the end user. The normal
user doesn’t care about dependencies,
libraries and other internals. They care
about screenshots, descriptions,
ratings, tags, comments,
recommendations from friends and
other features that current package
managers don’t provide,”

Video of the meeting is at <http://youtu.be/BHeP2ZBwS_U>

FULL ARTICLE TEXT:
====
DESKTOP/COMMUNITY
One store to rule them all?
====
   Recently, representatives from Red
Hat, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian, Fedora
and SUSE met to thrash out the issues
and problems that a unified packaging
system could resolve. Karlitschek said:
“After two-and-a-half days, we all
agreed on an architecture, and we’ll
work in the next few months to bring
this to all major distributions.”
   The resulting system, which should
allow users to install software from a
single source on any of the main distros,
will make life simpler for maintainers,
developers and – not least – users, who
will no longer have to worry about
dependency issues on their computers.
-- Coming together --
   The meeting in Germany was the
culmination of three months’ work, and
set about a sprint to create a working
prototype called AppStream. Within a
few days, a core group of hackers had
created a client application and solidified
the process around PackageKit, which
is available on both KDE and Gnome,
and the user interface from Ubuntu’s
Software Centre. Technology from the
Open Collaboration Services project will
enable users to review and rate software,
and distro-specific instructions will be
housed in a common XML file. One snag
is that Canonical will have to make the
Software Centre available under a
different licence in order to enable the
package to be included in a standard
Gnome desktop. Without this change,
the interface will have to be written
from scratch – putting the project back
by as much as 18 months, according to
some estimates.
   While this doesn’t mean that users
of all distros will have a single app store
from which to get software, it does
mean that developers can release and
market their wares to the largest
audience without having to build for
every combination of distribution and
architecture. Reviews and ratings from
a variety of users will be incorporated
into each distro’s software centre
automatically, and the process of
finding and deploying software should
be consistent across platforms.
   While no timescale has been
announced for integration into the
main distros, this should lead to a more
consistent system for Linux users and,
the planners hope, leave more time for
innovative coding.
   It was agreed that the Ubuntu Software
Centre provided the best model for the
unified distribution system. App stores
seem to be proliferating even faster than
Angry Birds clones, so it’s little
surprise that developers representing
world’s biggest distros have started
knocking together a unified application
installation API that could make a single
packaging method a reality.
   The project is the brainchild of KDE
developer Frank Karlitschek, who
wanted to reduce some of the
complexity involved in distributing
software to distros. He explained that
Project Bretzn should simplify the
process of getting software out (after
it’s been written) to a 10-minute
process. “The current package
managers expose way too much
complexity to the end user. The normal
user doesn’t care about dependencies,
libraries and other internals. They care
about screenshots, descriptions,
ratings, tags, comments,
recommendations from friends and
other features that current package
managers don’t provide,” he said.
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