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Re: [LUG] apt-getting apps from newer repos?

 

On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:57:54 +0000
Tom Potts <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I must say it is worrying how interdependent some packages are getting - 
> whatever happened to the early Unix philosophy of do one job and do it well.

I blame python.

More and more python developers think that python is the new Java and
that python apps deserve to work in all environments, so you get a KDE
frontend and a GNOME frontend or a KDE frontend for the 1.1 release and
a Gtk frontend for the 1.2 release. Drives you nuts.

The early Unix philosophy only really works for command line tools -
GUI tools are converging more and more. It's getting very difficult to
maintain a small GUI installation because more and more of the useful
GUI tools have spurious dependencies so that one app can cope with
varying environments.

This is something that Emdebian will be trying to tackle - splitting
the KDE frontend away from the Gtk frontend to make new packages so
that XFCE users don't need KDE and GNOME libraries.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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