Bringing The PackageKit Interface To Ubuntu

[kraftman]

I do not think that a lack of competition is the problem, there are many options and there always have been, though you may have a point about the marketing in the sense that many Ubuntu users seem ignorant that there are other options.

I bet Fedora with modified Gnome3 launcher to work similar to Gnome2 one, would become an Ubuntu killer. At this moment, there's really no choice for Gnome users. Both, Unity and Gnome Shell make launching applications hard and uncomfortable. I used to like Unity, but it started to make me mad after some time. I feel much more comfortable with simple launchers like the one from Win95.

[DaemonFC]

Could you link to something explaining the Ubuntu software center drm? Google claimed it doesn't have any.

Simple. When you purchase proprietary software using Ubuntu Software Center, it only works on X number of computers (decided by the proprietary software vendor), your Ubuntu Single Sign On is required to redownload and reinstall your purchases later, and you don't get a real DEB file that would work on other Debian-based distributions or be used as a local backup.

Ubuntu's DRM'd software store has a very Steam-ish DRM. Or to put it another way, A very big steaming pile of anti-user crap. It is the spiritual successor to Linspire and Click n' Run.

[Veerappan]

Simple. When you purchase proprietary software using Ubuntu Software Center, it only works on X number of computers (decided by the proprietary software vendor), your Ubuntu Single Sign On is required to redownload and reinstall your purchases later, and you don't get a real DEB file that would work on other Debian-based distributions or be used as a local backup.

Ubuntu's DRM'd software store has a very Steam-ish DRM. Or to put it another way, A very big steaming pile of anti-user crap. It is the spiritual successor to Linspire and Click n' Run.

So could you theoretically use a filesystem snapshot (or a user-space program) to get a full listing of files that are installed/changed during the proprietary program installation?

I seem to remember lunar linux tracking the full list of files installed when installing a program in a similar way so that it could create a full tarball of the final result from when you ran the 'make install' part of program installation. They use it as a way to cache the results for installation on either multiple machines, or as a way to avoid recompiling if you remove/reinstall a program.

[liam]

I bet Fedora with modified Gnome3 launcher to work similar to Gnome2 one, would become an Ubuntu killer. At this moment, there's really no choice for Gnome users. Both, Unity and Gnome Shell make launching applications hard and uncomfortable. I used to like Unity, but it started to make me mad after some time. I feel much more comfortable with simple launchers like the one from Win95.

If you need something faster than: top left corner->click on icon on left, then you could always install a launcher like synapse. For that matter, you could use the new dock extension (I say new b/c I just tried it again and they've improved it enormously (still not to where I would use it everyday, mind you, simply b/c I don't open and close new applications often)).
Ignoring those options you can always just hit SUPER and start typing then hit enter. That is faster than launching ever was in G2 without a launcher (or if you had your hand on a mouse, in which case I think it might be a bit faster to use the mouse on the panel icons, but once you go into the menu, GS then is faster every time).

[ninez]

This is just more of ubuntu's way of doing things;
take everything you can, but give nothing back.

They ABSOLUTELY should work to add features to packagekit, rather than just ripping off the parts of it they like and adding it to their proprietary garbage. Shame on ubuntu.

I'm with you here, Droidhacker!

Canonical/Ubuntu needs to realize that all of this downstream hackery they do, isn't healthy for the rest of the linux ecosystem. In fact, it is harmful to the rest of the linux ecosystem. Packagekit would benefit if the work were done there, and that would trickle down to other distro's and projects. This would have other added benefits - such as bugs being fixed, by people using other distros, these bugs could be ones that directly affect ubuntu, too.

Ubuntu is annoying that way. I mean you look at Unity for example. For the Archer's (ArchLinux users) who have been porting Unity to Archlinux ~ 86 packages have to be patched! (and that isn't 1 patch per package, either) Now, sure some Ubuntu patches obviously won't get accepted upstream, but when you look at just how many downstream patches Canonical/Ubuntu is implementing, it is retarded (mind you, some of them i do use in Arch, like the cairo-ubuntu patches..). Anyway, I really think Canonical/Ubuntu need to really start working closer with upstream ~ re-evaluate this idea that you need to bastardize every app/lib/api/etc with patching, and instead submit more code upstream and work with projects, not against them.

cheerz