Re: SEUL: TurboLinux

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

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   Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 23:12:40 +0200 (SAT)
   From: Neilen Marais <brick@cryogen.com>
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   > 
   > > I don't understand what you mean by that.
   > 
   > By re-roll I mean `rpm --rebuild` with new spec files.  Add in the proper 
   > dependency information and simply rebuild them.  However, I think there will 
   > be few enough packages we won't already be modifying to some extent or 
   > another that we won't be doing very many simple re-rolls.
   Talking about "rolling our own" and distributions:

   Debain might be better if we are modifying packages, because due to its
   open nature there is a much better chance that a package modified by SEUL
   will enter the main Debian distribution, and maintained properly by the
   original package maintainer.  This might prevent us having to "re roll"
   packages everytime an upgrade comes out.

   I must admit to not having used RH much, but my first impression is that
   they have changed things too much(network config files for example).
   Debian's package format is good (dselect not though...), so we can build
   on that...

   Another thing, relating to all the setup db, installation etc.  Though we
   must make things simple for the end user, even to the point of telling
   thing virtually nothing, it is important to leave info in such a way that
   an experienced user can fix a problem quickly.

   I tried to help a RH used over IRC once, who set one of his routes wrong
   in the GUI app.  He did not know quite what he was doing, and if I could
   only get him to edit the text file with the appropriate route statement,
   there would be no problem, but as I did not know the file name, and asking
   him to look around was useless so I was stuck...  Something to think about
   anyway.

There are two problems here: the choice of RPM or DPKG and frankly
IMHO does not matter much.  The problem is the choice of RedHat or
Debian as base.


SEUL could be a RedHAt with a better install, more attention given to
the home user and some apps changed.

It needs a LOT more work than that to make SEUL taking Debian as a
base.  And the problem is the spirit of Debian.

As en example look at Emacs (yes I know this is not an end user app)
as delivered in Debian 1.2.  First thing you notice is than it is
really ugly (black text on white) and it covers all your screen.  The
reason is than the Debian user is supposed to configure it itself.
And because SEUL is intended for people unable to do itthat is work we
would have to do.

In RedHat Emacs is nice with wheat text on slate gray background, and
it is reasonably sized.  RedHat has built Emacs so than most users can
live with it and will not be forced to reconfigure it.  So SEUL could
just include RedHat's Emacs out of the box.

And Emacs is not an isolated case.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

==================== The Linux.  Use the Linux, Luke! =======================

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