kde-quality Digest, Vol 35, Issue 4

[marco marinuzzo]

Hi Robert,
thanks for keeping hot the interest in this thread. :)

answering bottom-up:

>I have converted several barely-computer-literate friends over to unix, and
>the one thing they universally like is the package management system.
>You are stuck in a Windows mindset. I used to be too about 6 years ago. You
>have to let go of that before progress can be made.

I started this thread with this statement:

>I'm a Linux professional, managing 50 production servers for a
mid-size company.

More then 10000 users are connecting every day to one of this
producing servers running ldap, postfix/dovecot, apache, oracle,
groupware, tomcat, mysql, samba/winbind etc... and all are Linux or
Solaris powered machine.
I use a Mac laptop at office and a Mac desktop at home.
I usually program in C and PHP.
I'm an RHCT/RHCE (trying RHCA next year).
I'm not a newbie nor a Windows mindset.
My first Unix machine was a Vax, my first terminal a VT100, not an
emulator, a real VT100.

>Imagine a desktop with n qt apps each having an individual copy of qt
in their memory >space.

A drag and drop Mac OSX style application come only with the missing
libraries. More complicated appls come with an installer that check
the presence of system libraries and copy them there only if missing
(asking for the admin passwd).
Obviously, a KDE OS ready application does not need to have qt inside.
A KDE OS project with a long term binary compatibility needs to start
with all the library already installed to avoid the problem that you
correctly report.

>Try obtaining an even remotely obscure package for an even remotely
obscure distribution.

If we have to choose among 100000 distros, I don't think that choosing
the last one is the correct approach. Is Debian an obscure
distribution to start with?

>...Even MacOS comes with Apache, php et al.

1) I don't think there are 15000 packages in my Macs
2) If the engine of a KDE OS is, for example, Debian, a KDE OS project
needs to hack only a few packages, keeping intact all the others. The
fuel of the project is always available.

>In 2000 in debian I could type apt-get install gimp.

Why don't you try instead a (I'm joking...):
#tar xzvf somepackage.tar.gz
#./configure --with-xzy --with-sdf --with-ldap --enable-some-feat
--disable-somthing-else 1>/tmp/log.txt 2>/tmp/err.txt
#make
#make install
#less /tmp/err.txt

[...here 20 pages of errors that 1 of 10000000 people in the world
understand...]

...then two weeks of hard work to fix the problem.

Apt-get?, why not a yum or up2date or yast or a solid rpm -Uvh
(missing a dep that misses another one that misses two...)
and if the repository is missing?
and if you are behind a proxy?
of course, easy open a terminal, digit echo "export
http_proxy=http://someproxy.bau.bau" >> .bash_profile" then ".
.bash_profile" then retry...very easy... then open
/etc/apt/sources.lst etc etc.

We are talking about a DESKTOP environment that EVERYBODY can use.
A Desktop User is not a Power User nor a Programmer.

>one thing they universally like is the package management system

You forgot a letter..."package management systemS".
That letter is the difference from the success or not of Linux as a Desktop.

I'm not the only one to think so. Try the link that Kurt posted before:
http://ianmurdock.com/?p=388

Kurt said:

>Now if there were any chance to make this 1001st distro gain a 20%,
>40%, 70% market share amongst all Linux distros within 1, 2, 3 years
>I may re-consider this statement...

ISVs and Companies and Users and everybody working with a computer
want a standard.
What is a standard? It's the "1" where there are "1000000".
KDE is the "1"
Linux Distros are the "1000000"
All the market will consider a KDE OS as the standard in the Desktop
because it is already the Desktop of choice of all the Linux distros
(quite all).

I think that KDE OS could "Konquer" that market share and even better
because not only the geeks but everybody could enjoy with a Linux
machine.

KDE OS would be very fashionable (and cheap) to new users compared to
MS Vista or Mac OSX.