[CentOS] offtopic repo's further discussion

Hello All 
 I may have ruffled some feathers with a comment i made earlier about
rpmforge. This was posted back on the ML.

On Tue, 2010-01-12 at 14:47 -0600, lostson wrote:

>   For one stop using rpmforge this repo does nothing but trash a
system.

Discussion on that for us?

 So to oblige here is a further discussion on this subject. The reason I
say this about rpmforge is because if you install this repo and then do
a yum update watch what it will install a huge amount of packages, which
9 times out of 10 is gonna get messy.(which can happen with any repo)
And yes I know all about yum-pritorities another plugin that you can
install to control the various repo's that one would like to add. I have
no problems with this either. 

 Here is my issue the simple joy of playing a mp3 on rhythmbox or amarok
should not be a test of one's admin skills or repo knowledge to get it
to play. But it is, it is always "here read these 2 pages about
yum-priorities plugin and repo's" I mean cmon really? There are 2 repo's
CentOS Extras and CentOS Plus could this functionality be placed in
here ? Where is the repo I read about months ago that was gonna be
available for users to submit packages to ? These are all questions that
should be getting asked.

 Another point to make is on the list forums and other places we are
seeing a influx of new users, coming from all sorts of other distro's
and to make this simple instance so damn hard and having to pull from
outside sources or repo's seems silly to me. Should CentOS not provide a
simple and easy solution for some of these things ? I mean standard
music and movie playback should be an easy one to get. There seems to be
some areas where this is taking place for instance I know there is kmods
for alot of things, but I am looking at the plain ol home user who wants
to listen to music email basic desktop stuff. And yes I know all about
the patent encumbered bs that everyone spouts all the time and i today's
times this is just a moot point now.

 Lets face it some of the other distro's are starting to show their true
colors and are often too concerned with updates and the latest and
greatest packages. Which is breaking more things than anything else. So
people are coming to try out CentOS because of the stability and lets
face it one of the best and helpful communities out there right now. And
yes I know CentOS is mainly known for the RHEL compatibility and more
server usage than anything else and that is the main goal, but why can
the project not cater to the home user and tinkerer and developer as
well ? 

 All in all I should not of called out rpmforge on such a short straw
the work they do is excellent and any 3rd party repo you use has the
potential to hose a machine no doubt about it.

 All in all I'm not saying I want Cent to become one of the "other"
distros here I'm just saying is there room for improvement ? To make
things easier for the average user at home. We see it all the time on
the lists and IRC and I'm thinking a more straightforward approach to
the situation and keeping some things not all of course, but the simple
ones inhouse and in Cent repo's instead of having to go outside the box
just for simple things.

 Oh well all in all this is just my humble opinion and I'm sure I will
get ravaged and picked apart at the seams for this but hey that's me so
fire away!!



 
-- 
LostSon

http://lostsonsvault.org

CentOS - Its not just for servers ya know...
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