Making Installation more easy

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Asric

Making Installation more easy

Post by Asric »

Hello :-),
I hope I'm bringin in some new Ideas so therefore - if anything i say is realised at this time, ignore my post ;-).

After playing a bit with your new system you want to try to install something from the internet.
As a newbie you google something out you know that runs on linux like firefox and then you get a tar.bz2
You notice this is a ziped folder and try to unzip it and suddenly your whole desktop is full of files you don't really know how to use.
So you try another software and just don't know to handle it...

The Solution:
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What about a Programme wich helps you install packages (graphic-based) and relieves you of the console commands.
The archive you download has a file in wich is discribed how to install it by default and a simply right click on the archive shows you the option "Install"

The programme opened tells you what it does and where to find your files.
Another big step in controlling the computer would be eased up for switchers and the simplicity of linux mint would be increased without cutting off professional package handling.
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Problems:
In order of real usage unification would be a great deal:
Developers have to see the nescasarity of this feature and have to use it. Therefore this would have to be done by more distributions.
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I hope this helps improve linux mint and will increase the popularity of linux.
Greetings
Fred

Re: Making Installation more easy

Post by Fred »

Asric,

It should be a rare situation when a new user needs to go to an internet site and download a non-deb file and have to manually install it.

There over 25,000 files in the Ubuntu repos alone. The deb package is one of the two most common types. It is rare that you can't get the program of your choice in a deb package.

If you have downloaded a deb file just open it with gdebi and it will be installed for you.

There are other tools available for using other types of files too. You need to get away from the Windows way of scouring the internet looking for programs. You can spend literally hours reading the program descriptions found in synaptic. If you find something you think you might be interested in then you can go to the website for more information.

Just my thoughts. :-)

Fred
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