[MiNT] Fwd: Re: Re[2]: GEM boost

[evan@coolrunningconcepts.com]

Quoting Maurits van de Kamp <maurits@bassment.nu>:
> And the trouble being...?

If you don't know - use it longer!

>> Last I knew people didn't buy their ST machines for ANY of the little
>> projects that exist as RPMs for MiNT.
>
> I don't know anyone who bought their ST especially for MiNT at all.

My point was neither the history nor the future of Atari should be the RPMs on
sparemint.  They are just ports of Linux apps.   There seems to be this
mindset
to make MiNT into Linux, and Linux is already available, so please DON'T!

> That has nothing to do with RPM. It can be used to install Atari-specific
> software as well. The software you use ISn't rpm, it's just managed by rpm.

Traditionally, Atari software is installed by copying it anywhere you
like, and
maybe copy the .RSC file as well.  It can be moved anywhere at anytime,
and you
can delete it by simply removing it from your drive - toss it in the
trash can !

Thats user-friendly.

Now, for RPM to be effective, it has to be universal.  Everything has
to be RPM,
or at least all libraries and files that may have a dependency on any
other part
of the system.  So, if windom becomes a dynamically loaded library distributed
via an RPM  - which seems to be the direction we're heading - then all GEM
programs will have to be installed via RPM.  Now, due to changes of the windom
library, an upgrade is requried :

    rpm -ivh mygemapp.rpm

so that fails because it says windom is too old ... so they find and
download a
newer one:

    rpm -Uvh windom-x.y.rpm

This may fail and say that 10 other packages need the old version!

And yes, I have seen things exactly like this in the past on redhat systems.

And no more deleting something with the thrash can :

     rpm -e mygemapp.rpm


> What's so user-unfriendly about rpm? Is "rpm -Uvh package.rpm" so hard to
> type?

Since when did Atari users think thats its OK to go to shell prompt to install
software?   This makes me really sad.

>> Now I know why 50% of the Atari users are using MagiC!
>
> Sure, it's because they hate RPM. (Though my guess is that 99% of those MagiC
> users don't know what it is).

As long as MiNT is targetted towards Linux users, the traditional ST
user won't
be interested.





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