Re: installation program

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows brown edu>]

On Wed, Apr 21, 1999 at 10:04:30AM -0400, Andrew W. Freeman was heard to say:
> 
> As much as I understand the need for yet another mail/news program, I have
> to wonder if it would be better to give the average person an easier way to
> install GNOME first.  Even if the installation program was a script similar
> to what KDE uses that would help.  Realistically, though, long term there
> needs to be a full featured installation program allowing for many different
> ways to install, upgrade, and uninstall GNOME.  Perhaps it should be more
> generic than that, though.
> 

  If I may be forgiven for contributing my two cents:

  On Linux systems, at least, Gnome does not need an installation tool--in
fact, it would be inappropriate for Gnome to create one.  I already have an
installation tool on my system which allows me to install, upgrade, and
uninstall Gnome, it's called apt.  (For RedHat users: s/apt/rpmfind ;-) )
For Gnome to *require* its own private installation method would be unfriendly
to say the least; it should use native package managers whenever possible.

  On the other hand, I can imagine that some non-Linux systems without
package management would benefit from this?  I didn't get the impression
that that's what you were talking about though, apologies if you were.

  Daniel

   (PS: I'm obviously not going to come around and complain if someone does
       create a Gnome installer. :-)  But what would be more useful, IMO, is an
       intelligent dialog replacement that the native installer and install
       scripts could take advantage of.. not like gdialog but a complete
       replacement for the rather clumsy dialog syntax (although backwards
       compatibility would be easy to implement) I'm actually working on such
       a beast if anyone is interested, although it's still in an early stage
       of development.. )

-- 
  Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

  -- Elbart Hubbard