Article on PackageKit

[Wayne]

My favourite quote is this:

Hughes started thinking about PackageKit in September 2006. "I was talking to my friends who said, 'I switched away from Fedora, because that Pirut thing was crap,'" he recalls, referring to the distribution's then-default graphical interface for package management. "And I looked at things honestly, and I though, 'Yeah, this is crap.' And I looked at other tools, and they were rubbish as well, so I thought, 'How can I make things function better?'"

This whole statement is pure cr*p. Yumex leaves PackageSpit standing in the water. It annoyed me so much I removed it from my system and just use yum from a Terminal and Yumex when I feel like using a GUI...

To be honest, I haven't read the whole thing, no time this morning!

http://www.linux.com/feature/137115

Wayne

[Seve]

Hello:
If he wondered

How can I make things function better?

he had better get started on a new project

Seve

[Wayne]

Yes, and something that does not involve computers or software

Wayne

[bob]

If he's SMART, he's APT to find something a bit better....

[Seve]

Well done Bob

Any idea why being SMART and or APT wouldn't be good enough for Fedora ?

Seve

[Demz]

i don't mind packageKit but it'll improve with time an more releases of it .. i dont think the Add/Remove PackageKit is Great yet.

Mandriva 2009 will also have packageKit

Last week's release of openSUSE 11.0 marks the end of another eventful release season. Luckily for us, the distro developers never sleep and for the next few months we can expect a steady stream of development builds for interested beta testers. The delayed first alpha of Ubuntu 8.10 should be out any moment now, but it looks like the first major distribution with a new development release will be Mandriva Linux, which published a detailed roadmap for its upcoming version last week (see the Upcoming Releases and Announcement section below). So what can we expect in Mandriva Linux 2009? As always, there are many interesting points, which Shafiq Issani summarises neatly in this blog post: "Here's what you should expect from Mandriva Linux 2009: a revamped installer; improved boot speed; improved DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) management; improved language selection; Linux kernel 2.6.26; GCC 4.3; GNOME 2.24; KDE 4.1; Firefox 3.0; OpenOffice.org 3.0; implementation of the PolicyKit and PackageKit technologies; improvements to the Mandriva Windows migration and parental control utilities; Live Upgrade (same as Ubuntu's update-manager tool); init scripts improvements; Splashy will replace the actual boot splash; lots of desktop improvements. There are also some rumors that X.Org 7.4 and GRUB 2.x will be included in Mandriva 2009."

[JN4OldSchool]

Another strike against the Fedora developers in my book. Yumex has served me well since FC4. Much better than Pirut and Packagekit is what is complete crap. Why cant they just use Yumex? Sometimes I really wonder what these people are thinking...

[bob]

Of course, they're included, as Yum is also included in SuSE. You'd have to ask the devs why they're so stuck on yum and why apt is the defacto favorite of the great majority of the distros. Then too, why .rpm and .deb and so forth? On the one hand, it's holding linux back from getting drivers from software companies; on the other hand, it's keeping the virus and trojan and spyware peddlers at bay.

Sorry JN4, overposted on ya. Very true; they've got a winner with Yumex and it's been around forever. Go with that, just as Synaptic is installed automatically to handle Apt in other distros. It's the best, why not accept and use it?

[Firewing1]

I agree at the moment Pirut is superior to PackageKit, but I bet PackageKit will overtake it in no time. I've been a few screenshots of the upcoming version, it looks great and improves on a lot of it's previous weaknesses.

What's nice about PackageKit that we don't get to see is that it's cross-distro - Run it on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, whatever - It will get the information it needs and display it in the same way across all distros even though behind the scenes it's wrapping different package managers.
Firewing1

[Demz]

thats much better the upcoming version of Packagekit,, the 0.1.x version was kinda crap, i also believe the 0.1.x version did not do any GPG Signing while downloading/installing a package, where as 0.2.x version now does

[Dan]

I dunno, Stewart. After giving it (Package Kit) a fair try twice now ... I kinda wanna put it in the same box with Beagle ... and toss 'em both into a fast moving river.

[Wayne]

Beagle is the first thing that gets removed here... well, more specifically, Mono is the first thing that gets removed here and Beagle goes along for the ride

PackageKit lasted slightly longer

Wayne

[JN4OldSchool]

well, like everything else, we shall see how it evolves. But truthfully, I couldnt give two flips if it can wrap the package managers in multiple distros. When in debian I am happy with synaptic, when in Fedora I like yumex. Oh well, at least we have the option.

Wake me up when Linux has a universal repo for all distros. Then again, as someone above said, that will just be virus bait.

[scottro]

Going back to Bob's comment, there was an interesting thread on the testing list last week. Someone asked why is yum so much slower than apt, and there were various answers, some arguing the point.

Actually, I've never figured out if apt is actually faster or just seems to be because more is going on in the term window. I like smart, but sometimes I think I'm not SMART enough to get it configured properly. (Sorry Bob, that was a poor imitation of your groaner.)

ArchLinux's pacman is very good, in my opinion. ArchLinux packages are basically just tarballs though, as opposed to rpms or debs. I tend to do all this from console with yum or apt or smart, so I don't know about yumex and packagekit. Not having used it, I can't say, though it seems that the general opinion about it is that it's not very good--though some, like some of the posters here, do believe it will improve.

I doubt that any package manager will ever always make everyone happy--too many different people with different needs.

[Firewing1]

well, like everything else, we shall see how it evolves. But truthfully, I couldnt give two flips if it can wrap the package managers in multiple distros. When in debian I am happy with synaptic, when in Fedora I like yumex. Oh well, at least we have the option.

Wake me up when Linux has a universal repo for all distros. Then again, as someone above said, that will just be virus bait.

Interesting you mention that actually, I've been compiling a (fairly long) list of things that Linux needs to really make it big/mainstream, and that was one of them. Get rid of deb+rpm and make one better one. That would not only make package management easier, but speed the development of that one package manager and allow for a universal repository so all distros benefit at once.
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Firewing1