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| Should Sun continue to distribute the 2.0 series of OpenOffice.org as RPMs or switch back to the old installer? |
| Keep the RPMs |
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28% |
[ 24 ] |
| Switch back to the old installer |
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71% |
[ 61 ] |
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| Total Votes : 85 |
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ryan_mcgregor
General User
Joined: 04 Mar 2005
Posts: 8
Location: Canada
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 Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 11:42 am Post subject: Bring back the old installer!!! |
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I am posting this in the hopes that someone from Sun will see it (assuming they check the forums). I currently would like to help test the 2.0 development series of OpenOffice.org. Since I can't code and don't have enough money to donate, I feel this is the least I can do. I run Ubuntu Linux, which, in-case you don't know, is a Debian based Linux Distribution. I cannot for the life of me get either the source code to compile or the RPMs provided to convert to DEBs properly with Alien.
It is my opinion that Sun is severly limiting the base of users testing their development releases. There are countless examples of people (here and on sites such as linuxquestions.org) that won't install the latest releases from the 2.0 tree simply because of this. I don't feel I should have to switch back to Windows, to the development release of Ubuntu or to an RPM based distro just to help test Sun's development software. I know I am one potential tester Sun has currently lost because of their decision on this matter.
So I am starting this poll where people can vote on whether Sun should continue distributing RPMs or bring back the old installer, which currently works on any x86 and ppc Linux distro. Please vote and let Sun know what you think! |
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bobharvey
Super User
Joined: 23 Apr 2004
Posts: 1075
Location: Lincolnshire
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cwchia
Super User
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Posts: 1050
Location: Malaysia
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| Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm dual booting Win XP and Mdk 10.1 Official. though MDK uses rpms, I stll prefer the old installer. Things are much easier with the installer. |
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r_vinoya
Super User
Joined: 03 Dec 2003
Posts: 619
Location: Somewhere in the Philippines
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dasunst3r
General User
Joined: 05 Jan 2005
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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Although I favor the classic installer more, I see their rationale for switching to RPMs:
Back in the days of the old installer, each user can install to their own home directory. This causes unnecessary clutter to the system. With RPMs, only root can install the program and solves that problem.
However, the problem is that RPMs are not necessarily user-friendly as refugees from the land of Mammon are used to wizards guiding them through everything. Therefore, I say we keep a hybrid of sorts -- there can still be an installer, which will prompt for the root password and issue the "rpm -ihv {package}" commands on their behalf in the background. |
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Michael A. Kearsley
OOo Advocate
Joined: 04 Jul 2004
Posts: 390
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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| dasunst3r wrote: | Although I favor the classic installer more, I see their rationale for switching to RPMs:
Back in the days of the old installer, each user can install to their own home directory. This causes unnecessary clutter to the system. With RPMs, only root can install the program and solves that problem.
However, the problem is that RPMs are not necessarily user-friendly as refugees from the land of Mammon are used to wizards guiding them through everything. Therefore, I say we keep a hybrid of sorts -- there can still be an installer, which will prompt for the root password and issue the "rpm -ihv {package}" commands on their behalf in the background. |
There are scripts now on the mirrors to automise installation, I haven't tried them as I currently don't have any version of Linux on my PC although I did have WinLinux 2003 on my PC for a bit and found the RPM's perfectly easy to install. |
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cwchia
Super User
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Posts: 1050
Location: Malaysia
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:26 am Post subject: |
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| dasunst3r wrote: | Although I favor the classic installer more, I see their rationale for switching to RPMs:
Back in the days of the old installer, each user can install to their own home directory. This causes unnecessary clutter to the system. With RPMs, only root can install the program and solves that problem.
However, the problem is that RPMs are not necessarily user-friendly as refugees from the land of Mammon are used to wizards guiding them through everything. Therefore, I say we keep a hybrid of sorts -- there can still be an installer, which will prompt for the root password and issue the "rpm -ihv {package}" commands on their behalf in the background. |
Agree. But what about linux users who are not on rpm based system, like Debian, Lindows etc? |
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Ed
Super User
Joined: 28 May 2003
Posts: 1040
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 1:56 am Post subject: |
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| dasunst3r wrote: |
There are scripts now on the mirrors to automise installation, I haven't tried them as I currently don't have any version of Linux on my PC although I did have WinLinux 2003 on my PC for a bit and found the RPM's perfectly easy to install. |
I don't think that automisation is what is needed here. Issuing the command "rpm -ivh ./*" provides a perfectly automated process. What is needed is a method of giving the user more, not fewer, options, ie. a more interactive and less automated process.
I've added my vote to this poll. |
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vae
Newbie
Joined: 09 Mar 2005
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 11:29 am Post subject: Why not both. |
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| Is it too expensive to keep both RPM and old installer (and also add Debian)? |
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9point9
Moderator
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 3875
Location: UK
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:42 pm Post subject: |
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Both would be nice. It's only another 100Mb to have both. I like RPM's in general seeing how I use an RPM based distro but I can understand why so many people have a problem with it. I've been told that compiling from source is not for the faint hearted but it can't be that hard (correct me if I'm wrong!) for a script to be knocked together to make a source based installation easy.
Which would produce the smallest download?
_________________
Arch Linux
OOo 3.2.0
OOoSVN, change control for OOo documents:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooosvn/ |
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ryan_mcgregor
General User
Joined: 04 Mar 2005
Posts: 8
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Although I favor the classic installer more, I see their rationale for switching to RPMs:
Back in the days of the old installer, each user can install to their own home directory. This causes unnecessary clutter to the system. With RPMs, only root can install the program and solves that problem.
However, the problem is that RPMs are not necessarily user-friendly as refugees from the land of Mammon are used to wizards guiding them through everything. Therefore, I say we keep a hybrid of sorts -- there can still be an installer, which will prompt for the root password and issue the "rpm -ihv {package}" commands on their behalf in the background. |
You did know that with the old installer you could do a network installation which would make it so that each user has no more files in their home folder than you get with the RPMs in the ~/.openoffice directory, didn't you? I did this on numerous computers for my family who had multi-users. You could do this in Windows too. |
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veljko
Newbie
Joined: 12 Mar 2005
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 1:48 am Post subject: Bring back the old installer!!! |
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Such a disappointment. This is a serious "innovation" and without any warning what so ever - like "Switch to Sun Java Desktop/RH/SUSE..."
Bring back the old installer!!!
"Don't fence me in" for not using an RPM based distribution!
Slackware GNU/Linux user
P.S. Yes, I know, I can use RPMs, but that is not the point here. |
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Jones
General User
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
Posts: 47
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| Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:08 pm Post subject: |
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| I use Vector Linux a slackware based Linux, all I can say is, bring back the installer. |
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farvardin
General User
Joined: 17 Mar 2005
Posts: 14
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| Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:13 pm Post subject: |
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I prefer the old installed.
But on a Debian system it's still possible to install rpm, even without using alien. rpm -i works just fine. It seems ubuntu is non compliant with several other systems. |
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Jones
General User
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
Posts: 47
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:07 pm Post subject: Re: Why not both. |
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| vae wrote: | | Is it too expensive to keep both RPM and old installer (and also add Debian)? |
Aren't RPMs more expensive than the installer anyway?
RPMs and compiling software are two of the things I dislike most about Linux!
Don't get me wrong I like Linux, but I don't use a RPM distribution.
I don't know why all Linux disros use a standard package system it shouldn't matter a Linux particular package run on any Linux system. You shouldn't need 100s of packages each for different distros if you want to distribute your software. RPMs have put may developers off to for this reason. There are also many ready made free Linx multi-platform installers available, but I've never come accros a program that uses them perhaps Open Office should be the first. |
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