Re: Road map--or some such.

[Wolfgang Jaehrling]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 10:53:02PM +0200, Marco Gerards wrote:
> Perhaps it would be better to provide packages.  Everyone has his
> favorite editor, window manager, etc.  Except the practical
> disadvantage for many people I am worried about custom repositories
> filled with non-free crap.  If there is already a repository of
> software people will use that.

That is a good point, but at least for the next few years, the GNU
system will suck so much that I suspect only real Free Software
fanatics^Wenthusiasts will be interested in it anyway...

> IMHO it should be easy for people to access Free Software, even if it
> is not GNU software.  So something like apt or the ports system might
> work really nice for that.

Hard to argue against that.  I like the idea of making it easy to
access Free Software, but consider: The more different programs are
widely used, the harder it is for users to help each other.  If you
are using Sawfish and I am using Window Maker, you can hardly help me
if I have a problem.  I think it is more important to make it easy for
people to help each other and cooperate than to provide many choices
by default.  GNU is not only about freedom; it is just as much about
community.

Additionally having many packages makes it hard to find programs for a
certain purpose.  On this computer I am using Debian woody.  Suppose I
don't remember the name of the "top" program, but I want to find and
install it.  I might try the command:

 $ apt-cache search process

I get a list of 528 packages as the result.  I'm certainly not going
to look through the list until I find what I was looking for.  (This
was the very first example that came to my mind.)  That is of course
only a rather minor point compared to the aspect mentioned above.

I don't think an operating system should come on more than one CD.

Cheers,
Wolfgang

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