Difference Between Automatix and EasyUbuntu (was Re: Newbie Wurkshop)

[rbil]

On Tue, 2006-14-11 at 13:27 -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> >> Please, lets keep seperate the issue of IRC and Automatix. The larger
> >> issue at hand is actually third party repos. If creators of those
> >> repos are not careful, and most of them are not, they can easily mess
> >> up a system when it tries to upgrade to the next version of Ubuntu.
> >>     
> Then IMO there should be some specific discussion on Ubuntu websites of
> this issue.
> 
> The fact is that people _do_ want to load stuff like the Microsoft web
> fonts, win32codecs, decss, and other stuff that isn't on the core Ubuntu
> (or Canonical) sites.
> 
> I'm not impressed with Automatix as an installer, it certainly seems
> needlessly redundant to someone using Adept (not to mention the fact
> that it forces a lot of otherwise-unnecessary GNOME cruft onto Kubuntu
> systems). But it's used, because it looks appealing and there is no
> definitive information from the community with which to make an informed
> choice.
> 
> Searching for "plf", "easyubuntu", "win32codec" or "decss" on ubuntu.com
> provides zero hits, not even a pointer to where to find other
> information. (Searching for "win32" takes you to the certification
> program, of all things!)
> 
> >> For Feisty the dist-upgrader will try and work around some of these
> >> situations, but not all of them can be done so. So please, consider
> >> very wisely when you tell people to use any third party stuff. I say
> >> use EasyUbuntu because of their devs are also MOTUs and thus have an
> >> inside view of some of the breakage these third party repos have done
> >>     
> This is very valuable information, if more people were aware of it
> Automatix might never be used.
> 
> When I used Mandriva the answer was easy to find and do; add PLF to your
> repositories using the "easyurpmi" tool. I wasn't expecting the answer
> to be so much fuzzier, and so much harder to find, in Ubuntu-land. Two
> of the main solutions, EasyUbuntu and Automatix, are extra pieces of
> software -- why do I need these just to find an appropriate repo?
> 
> Can there not be a semi-definitive Wiki page somewhere regarding the
> recommended contents of one's source.list file? To someone new to
> Ubuntu, just figuring out to add "universe" and "multiverse" (and why to
> do this for a newbie) is non-trivial. It would be nice for people to
> know whether adding the Skype repo has been known to break any other
> packages.
> 
> It doesn't help that there is conflicting information on whether PLF
> support for Ubuntu is current or not.
> http://plf.zarb.org/ says it's down but
> http://packages.freecontrib.org/plf/ looks quite alive
> 
> How well-respected is the information at ubuntuguide.org?
> How about http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/doc/plf ?
> 
> Can you see why it's so easy to do the wrong thing?
> 
> >
> > Does EasyUbuntu use 3rd party repos, or does it just automate the process of installing things like codecs?
> How can one separate the two? Since the restricted packages can't be
> found on the official servers, _any_ system -- automated or manual -- 
> for installing them must somehow point people at unofficial repos.
> 
> If there was at least documented -- SOMEWHERE -- on the Ubuntu site
> indicating things such as EasyUbuntu or freecontrib.org it would prevent
> people from needing to Google the information -- and then finding
> themselves open to every little idea of how to do things.
> 
> - Evan
> 
> 
Yeh, but your suggestion would be far too logical an approach. Better to
intimidate users away from Automatix rather than make it easy to find
the "correct" way to get some of these things installed.

Cheers,
Rene

Hanging in there at Day Nine.