On 02/26/2014 02:55 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 7:31 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic centos@plnet.rs wrote:
My understanding is that nothing more then allowing Cloud people to work in one/several SIG's will EVER going to change in CentOS, so there is no point in even trying. Especially not for newbies/Desktops. CentOS distro will remain user-unfriendly until Sun turns off, and as consequence it will remain a distro of choice for RHEL admins and no one else. Sad but fact of life. It has me thinking that one option is to ditch actual CentOS and use something CentOS like, maybe SL or Russian ROSA, so if I help someone I do not have to spill blood and waste time all the time. I already lost many business opportunities by standing my ground in "I only use CentOS", so I might even think about learning Debian way and cover both Desktop and Server users with one knowledge and expertise.
You are going to want packages on a desktop for media playing, etc. that won't ever be in EPEL because of policies that can't change. So you might as well stat with ubuntu or mint.
Only way to make things easier for newbies/Desktop use is to create repository that will have release info on all third party repositories, so you give newbies instruction like
yum install http://<link to single release file> yum install epel-release yum install elrepo-release etc.
But here is the problem. If you use more than epel and elrepo you have no assurance that the 3rd 3rd party repo will stay coordinated with epel (which you'll almost certainly need). The more you add, the more chances there are for duplication of package names that aren't really the same packages or build. And eventually you'll run into a conflict in updates or the update will pull in a version of something with surprising differences - and not having that kind of breakage is the main reason to start with CentOS in the first place. If you were advising someone else how to set up their first Centos box, think about how long that conversation has to be, and how strange it all seems that the repositories set up to help people do not stay coordinated with each other and thus are likely to eventually cause trouble. Even ones that don't replace core packages don't track each other.
Is it better to have users COMPILE FROM SOURCE???? Because they f***ing DO!
Ultimately, responsibility lies on user. He is the owner of the system, and he will do what ever needs to be done. And since CentOS/RHEL does not provide MANY things (EPEL is 2 TIMES LARGER then Base + Updates repositories, and elrepo has 260 packages so at least 150 distinct drivers NEEDED by community).
So when one stupid newbie created blog entry explaining that CentOS does not have that package, so you need to recompile it, and gives you step-by-step howto, something is wrong. But when there is MORE such pages/blogs then "install it from 3rd party repository we wish not to name so there are no favorites...", then you have a HUGE problem. And solution is to REDUCE the number of problematic blogs/pages, not increase them doing absolutely nothing. "Prime directive" (Star Trek reference) is all excellent and shiny, but does not solve people getting burned anyway, and teaching others the wrong way in the process.
By the way, RepoForge is practically dead in the water so no need using it as EPEL vs Repoforge argument. If you were to create a poll on forums (2-3 weeks of announcement in advance would be enough to rally all for and against) where you would ask:
1) Do you agree that release packages for only EPEL and ElRepo repositories are provided, but not other repositories, I am guessing 80-90% will vote yes, and you will have community approval as a basis for any question other repositories might raise.
I would be happy with something just resembling the CentOS name (DentOS. PentOS, ...), but on the same resources as CentOS (either using CentOS packages as a base or rebuilding it under another brand while building CentOS packages) so there is newbie-friendly version that allows 3rd party repositories. And I am guessing that this approach would mean most people would choose this enhanced version of CentOS over original CentOS, exactly because of out-of-the-box experience.
Maybe even "What is a proper way to do things" video that explains differences to other distro's for users that are coming from Ubuntu/Debian/Mint could help such transitions.
Also worth thinking about is rebuilding EPEL and ElRepo packages inside CentOS build system, so control is absolute that it will not mess up anything.