Re: [Synaptic-devel] Synaptic in the press

[Guillaume Pratte]

> I don't really know what exactly he is asking for (we might just ask
> him :) but I guess he wants to hide some of the packages that synaptic
> shows right now. Like the lib-packages. I guess the idea is to have
> some "meta-packages" like what we have in debian with gnome-core,
> gnome and display only those. So that you basicly don't have to
> maintain packages but more high-level entities. A bit like debian
> tasksel and (maybe, never used red-carpt) red-carpet channels.
>
> To do this we need support from the distributions. We need additional
> metadata that helps synaptic to understand about such entities. The
> debtags project might be a way to provide the additional metadata.

I do think something like this is missing in Debian. It's not enough to have a 
KDE meta-package if it is treated the same as a normal package by Synaptic. I 
feel there should be an "evident place" in the application where you can 
easily install, for instance, Gnome 2.6 when it comes into unstable, without 
having to know if the package you need to install is called "gnome-core", 
"gnome-deskop", "gnome-2.6" or whatever name the meta-package actually has...

The same goes for important desktop applications, such as Gimp, KMail and 
Evolution, Firefox, etc. It would be nice to have a "popularity" meta-tag 
that would enable Synaptic to display important and popular software the user 
might want to install.

Check out these Xandros Network screenshots, even if they do not portray 
exactly what I mean :

http://www.xandros.com/images/screenshots/xn2_ss.png
http://www.xandros.com/images/screenshots/xn_ss.png

Guillaume Pratte