Migration to Dapper

[Alan McKinnon]

On Friday, 24 February 2006 04:20, Michael V. De Palatis wrote:
> > > My own observations tell me that the vast majority of users
> > > just use apt. If it's not in the Ubuntu repositories, they
> > > don't install it.
> >
> > That's my feeling - though I had no data to back it up.  I'm
> > reasonably adventurous, but I just don't see the point, most of
> > the time, to install anything that isn't prepackaged.
>
> In most cases, I agree with you.
>
> While *almost* everything you ever need is available as a deb
> package in some form or another (whether it be via a third party or
> directly from, in this case, Ubuntu), there are some things that
> aren't "mainstream" enough for packaging to occur. If, say, you are
> developing some sort of scientific software, then what incentive do
> you have to make a Debian/Ubuntu-specific package for it if that's
> not what you use? Unless the community is so large that someone
> will do it, it's not going to happen.

True, but me you and Derek make a small % of the Linux user base. When 
we need an obscure program we aren't suddenly up the creek like some 
other OSes. wget, gcc and /usr/local fixes that in a jiffy.

It's the old story of the base system handles the vast majority of 
one's needs. On the odd occasion where it doesn't, there's a built-in 
solution that's easy to use, easy to learn and easily accessible.

> Another important issue is licensing. As I've mentioned before, I
> think the mess with OpenSSL is ridiculous. 

<snip>

I hear you. But I still prefer free licenses to the alternative, even 
when it leads to the odd ridiculous situation like debian and xinetd. 
If you really need to, you can always keep your own little collection 
of private .debs if you need to maintain several machines
-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five