On Thu, Mar 20, 1997 at 08:53:03AM -0500, Bill Sommerfeld wrote:
> > True.  However, not all users are created equal, and I am not at all
> > sure I think we want the point-and-drool crowd.  
> 
> It's also effective at keeping out busy people of clue, and we
> definitely don't want to do that.

While I build 99.99% of software myself, I know and understand that
there are lots of people who can't or don't want to do this themselves.
Building some packages takes huge amounts of disk space (hundreds of
megabytes). CPU power, memory, time, some knowledge about configuring
and compiling software.. sometimes you even need to install some other
packages before compiling the one you need.

It would be nice to have the most common software available in easily
installable binary form, although I would probably never use it myself.

I don't know how well the linux rpm stuff works, but it sounds like a
nice concept - easy install, easy removal of third party software.
I have even installed one commercial linux package on my NetBSD system
and it was pretty simple..  I'm not saying we should do things the same
way as the linux folks - it's just the only example I happen to know of.


  -jm


-- 

                I'm not lazy - I'm only selectively motivated

                     ---> http://www.jmp.fi/~jmarin/ <---