Hi, Listaller Developers

[Ma Xiaojun]

Hi, all.

I'm yet another FOSS, GNU/Linux advocate.
But I was terrified by the fact that it is difficult to have latest
FOSS on many Linux distros.
For example, I want GIMP 2.8.
I can simply download the official binary installer on deprecated
Windows XP.
Or I use a PPA on latest Ubuntu 12.04.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/gimp-2-8-released
Many of my friends use Arch Linux, since Arch Linux features latest
packages.
I admire the Arch way, but it is not suitable for most computer users
anyway.

High coupling between applications and base system is definitely not
ideal.
0. It requires enormous packaging man power.
1. It makes application installation tricky, if the user do care the
version.
2. It makes ISVs harder to deploy Linux applications.
3. It makes contributor harder to make valuable changes.
4. ...
But I cannot understand why most Linux people don't find such practice
flawed.

I note Autopackage was started around 2002 when people are struggling
with "RPM Hell".
You know, Red Hat's package coverage is always limited.
Debian at that time is too hard for beginners I guess.
Autopackage should make prefect sense at that time but I didn't notice
it at all.

When the polished Debian, Ubuntu, started in 2005.
The dominant way of installing application seems to be sudo apt-get
install XXX.
Then we have PPA and software center.
But PPA is not that ideal, many PPA are poorly maintained.
Software center, on the other hand, is just a poor wrapper of the APT
system.

Fortunately, there is still Listaller nowadays.
I'd like to support you guys by this unordered post.
Thank you in advance.

Best Regards,
Ma Xiaojun

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi! :)

2012/6/20 Ma Xiaojun <damag...@gmail.com>:
> [...]

> I'm yet another FOSS, GNU/Linux advocate.
> But I was terrified by the fact that it is difficult to have latest
> FOSS on many Linux distros.
> For example, I want GIMP 2.8.
> I can simply download the official binary installer on deprecated
> Windows XP.
> Or I use a PPA on latest Ubuntu 12.04.
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/gimp-2-8-released

Indeed that is the issue we want to solve, although it is not very
easy to do. (It's not only the unified installer which is needed but
very often some other modifications, where Listaller contains helper
tools for)

> Many of my friends use Arch Linux, since Arch Linux features latest
> packages.
> I admire the Arch way, but it is not suitable for most computer users
> anyway.

Arch does well, but rolling-release has some serious issues - for
advanced users, it's no problem to use rolling-release, for
unexperienced people and in the enterprise it's not ideal. (I also
like Arch, btw. ;-P)

> High coupling between applications and base system is definitely not
> ideal.
> 0. It requires enormous packaging man power.
> 1. It makes application installation tricky, if the user do care the
> version.
> 2. It makes ISVs harder to deploy Linux applications.
> 3. It makes contributor harder to make valuable changes.
> 4. ...
> But I cannot understand why most Linux people don't find such practice
> flawed.

It has some very nice advantages, e.g. you can ensure that everything
works great together. But of course it has some problems too.
That's why Listaller is not a replacement but an extension to the
current way we use for packaging - but you knew that already ;-)

> I note Autopackage was started around 2002 when people are struggling
> with "RPM Hell".
> You know, Red Hat's package coverage is always limited.
> Debian at that time is too hard for beginners I guess.
> Autopackage should make prefect sense at that time but I didn't notice
> it at all.
>
> When the polished Debian, Ubuntu, started in 2005.
> The dominant way of installing application seems to be sudo apt-get
> install XXX.
> Then we have PPA and software center.
> But PPA is not that ideal, many PPA are poorly maintained.
> Software center, on the other hand, is just a poor wrapper of the APT
> system.

PPAs are highly dangerous, as you're offering a 3rd-party root access
to you computer. Also, PPAs are equal sources of packages for the base
system, and if you add multiple PPAs, they might very well interfere
with each other or break upgrades, which results in situations which
can't be handled by unexperienced users, which will just result in a
completely broken system.
Listaller separates the system from 3rd-party applications which are
installed, so you will never experience problems. (worst thing which
could possibly happen is that a 3rd-party Listaller applications stops
working after a distro-upgrade, if Listaller is unable to fix it's
dependencies. But you'll never experience a broken OS. Of course, this
makes Listaller not usable for installing parts of the system core,
you should use PPAs for that. (but the average user doesn't want to
upgrade system parts))
The Software Center is a app-centric frontend to distribution repositories.

> Fortunately, there is still Listaller nowadays.
> I'd like to support you guys by this unordered post.
> Thank you in advance.

Thanks! What we really need at time is more developers (:-P) and
distribution support. Listaller is usable for simple purposes right
now, but some key pieces like software-update-integration or advanced
dependency resolving are still not finished, which is a problem at
time.
Listaller is already present in Debian and Ubuntu as tech-preview. It
would be cool if other distributions included it too - not as default
(yet), but as something people can try.
If Listaller is available in distributions, distributing Listaller
packages will also become much easier, because software developers can
be sure their users will be able to install Listaller easily.
I'm in contact with vendors of proprietary games, who are interested
in this project too. This is the main issue for IPK support right now.

The Listaller project itself provides the application installer and
tools to help writing cross-distro applications.
If you're a developer, you can help :-) If not, you can maybe help
writing documentation or just spread the word about Listaller, which
is also great, it's good if more people know about this project.

I'm very busy with my GSoC project on AppStream/PackageKit/OpenSUSE
and exams at time, but after that has finished, there'll be also some
more Listaller news again.
Thanks for the mail!
Regards,
Matthias