Common problems with Ubuntu

[Nadav Har'El]

On Tue, May 11, 2010, Tzafrir Cohen wrote about "Re: Common problems with Ubuntu":
> Normally I don't need most existing "development" packages anyway.

This is a good point. I do think there needs to be a clear separation
between "development" tools and standard compilers:

Everybody, not just developers, needs a C compiler on the system, because
when you want to install something from source, you usually need a C compiler.
Everybody, not just developers, needs a shell. Everybody, not just developers,
need, Perl and Python on their system because many packages require it to run.

However, most people do not need four variants of Java, three IDEs, two
debuggers, or a valgrind in a pear tree. Even for developers, hardly anyone
needs or wants all the tools available under the sun, especially when there
are so many huge tools that replicate each other's purpose (e.g., Eclipse
and Netbeans for Java development). In the old days, the distro makers had
to choose: Does package X get included in the distro, and installed for most
people, or does it not get included? Nowadays, this is hardly the case -
most users are connected to the Internet, and are used to using "yum" or
"apt-get" or whatever for quickly getting packages they want but weren't
installed by default.

Instead of answering a zillion questions during installation (do you want
eclipse? do you want netbeans? etc.), it's often easier just to install
whatever you want, whenever your want it.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Thursday, May 13 2010, 29 Iyyar 5770
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