Binary incompatibility of Linux distributions

[Derek Broughton]

Odd wrote:

> Synaptic is good, but not great. It could be better.
> Also, the fact that there is so much software there could
> be intimidating to newbies.
> I'd like to have an alternative web front-end for it,
> with more extensive descriptions, screenshots and filtering methods.
> In it's current form, it's not particularly user-friendly.

Now you're talking.   This I completely agree with (and it goes for _all_ 
the other apt front ends).

Unfortunately, "extensive descriptions" need more documentation effort from 
packagers - and documentation is the weakest part of most Free software.  
Screenshots would be nice, and could probably be handled by simply having an 
optional HTML/XML file in packages that the apt front-end would look for, or 
better a tag in the description pointing to web pages, so that one doesn't 
need to download the package first.

apt also needs a simpler way to add unknown third party repositories.  For 
instance, if I have the URL for a specific package, I can usually work out 
the address that needs to be added to /etc/apt/sources.list, so that I can 
get automatic updates, but the ordinary end user will never work it out, or 
figure out how to get (or why they should have) the gpg keys.  gdebi should 
attempt to work these things out for you if you click on a deb package on a 
website, and offer to add them to your sources (with appropriate warnings).
-- 
derek