Debating A Software Center For Fedora

[GreatEmerald]

I agree that Fedora should have a new software management application, but I'm with those who want a sophisticated one. The main reason why I never got into Fedora was that package management was horribly difficult - even a task like adding a new repository was nearly impossible. So an advanced package manager like YaST Qt would do it a lot of good.

As for the language, I have to agree with pvtcupcakes here. The speed is not about the language, it's about how you optimise your code. C and C++ are vastly overrated, anyway.

[pvtcupcakes]

Whatever they create I hope it's not created by a python/ruby script kiddie. I want fast startup etc. Unfortunately there's too many feeble minded programmers (at Canonical and elsewhere) who think C++ (or C or alike) are too sophisticated/whatever.

You can write fast applications in Python and Ruby.
It's definitely possible to write a software center app in one of those languages that starts up quicker than a C++ application like Firefox.

[varese4]

Whatever they create I hope it's not created by a python/ruby script kiddie. I want fast startup etc. Unfortunately there's too many feeble minded programmers (at Canonical and elsewhere) who think C++ (or C or alike) are too sophisticated/whatever.

you stole words from my mind; i mean, i respect all the developers, but really, they should grow up.

[josian_220]

Although the current UI to install and uninstall apps in fedora sucks, it is fast. Ubuntu Software center is always slow when I test it I know that the new software center for 11.10 is a lot faster than the previous ones but still isn't as fast as I would like, with fedora I just limit myself to install stuff via yum.

[leif81]

Presence of one-click "application-center" is what distinguishes user-friendly os from developer-only os.

Windows doesn't have one and it seems to be doing alright...

However I'm in 100% agreeance that small OS's (ok anything that's not Windows) need to do everything they can to interest users and keep them excited. The amount of software available on Fedora/Ubuntu is staggering but I think most (especially new but also experienced) users have no idea. Some sort of "what's new", "what's hot" type listings would go a long way to building that connection between developer/packager and the users.

[ssam]

i would say that fedora is more in need of an advanced package GUI like synaptic.

the current software install GUI is simple enough, and would mainly benefit from speed (sounds like zif will fix this), and better search (sometimes i get 500 irrelevant results and sometimes no use results).

also it would be nice if rpm caught up with some of the fancy features in deb, for example distinguishing between depends, recommends and suggests.

[cl333r]

Whatever they create I hope it's not created by a python/ruby script kiddie. I want fast startup etc. Unfortunately there's too many feeble minded programmers (at Canonical and elsewhere) who think C++ (or C or alike) are too sophisticated/whatever.

[Tiger_Coder]

Good thing if it happends

I use Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Arch at home. Fedora at university labs. Fedora package management GUI just sucks. Many time even command line yum don't work for lock of packagekit with some unknown package manager(updater may be?). I mean I like fedora's stability, Gnome3 and developer friendliness. But you can all achieve that with a good package management front-end.

[Luke_Wolf]

isnt this what packagekit was going to do ? seems that will never happen. and why would all linux look or act the same ? then why have so many distros? just kill those with little marketshare and then all linux will look the same.

if i wanted a distro that behaves and looks like ubuntu then i would use ubuntu.

imo the only duplication that should be killed is the RPM vs DEB fiasco. They should unify this crap into one, maybe something like "dpm" ?

anyway Ubuntu software center is going to be so good in the next releases, so am sticking with it.

You do I hope realize that unifying the package formats will not create universal packages I hope? And outside of the Source-Based Distros + Arch, There are no non-Debian-or-non-Ubuntu-Derivatives that haven't already standardized on RPMs. Note that Across even the Debian|Ubuntu Line there can be massive incompatibilities, So why should you expect that across Distro families that a universal package would be compatible?

as to your packagekit complaint, yes that's part of what packagekit is supposed to be about, but the idea I've gathered is more or less have the System Administrator Types Package manager (packagekit) and have the more general user's package manager (Bretzn), with Bretzn being backed by the OpenBuildService in order to create automated distro-specific packages.

[crazycheese]

Presence of one-click "application-center" is what distinguishes user-friendly os from developer-only os.