Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)
Hey guys,
I was amused to see my blog post [1] made it to this list. I figured
I'd clarify a few points which were omitted from that blog in the
interests of brevity and humour.
Mike Hommey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, his main problem is "Having not used Debian for about
> 8 years".
Most of your new users (all of them in fact, by definition!) will
never have used Debian before. This should not stop them using your
product.
Part of the problem I had was that I had a vague understanding that
there was something called "apt", but that I didn't know what it was
or how to do anything with it. The man page said to see apt-get's;
apt-get's man page suggested the tool was a back-end but didn't really
give any clues as to what front end to use.
> The strange thing is that he has been able to apt-get install
> aptitude, but tryed something else for xchat at first...
I did actually try using apt-get originally when I had my original
libgtk1.2 problem:
# apt-get libgtk1.2
E: Invalid operation libgtk1.2
I tried to understand this:
# man apt-get
/E: Invalid
Pattern not found (press RETURN)
After reading the whole man page, I did try apt-get install libgtk1.2,
but then I got the whole conflict problem I mention later in my blog.
I decided to get the source and do it myself, but since I didn't know
where that would be, I switched to trying to get X-Chat, and since I
was already in source mode, it didn't even cross my mind to use
apt-get for that. (After all, apt-get had just failed me, why would it
succeed now?)
To the end user (me), apt-get is arbitrarily verbose. "Selecting
previously deselected package libbla3.2"? "Get:1 ftp://apt sid/main
libbla3.2 3.2.10-9 [827kB]"?
Look at operating systems used by less intelligent users. They just
see:
[# ] 60% 2 minutes remaining
Admittedly, this is usually followed by a crash, but the user is not
intimidated. (Having said that, personally, I quite like seeing the
verbose output, it's useful for debugging. Most users don't.)
> And another thing : it seems that the pre-installed Debian he got
> was configured with both testing/unstable in the sources.list file.
> Pinning is not the easiest thing to catch when you are (alone)
> beginner with Debian...
Matt Zimmerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> It's also a really stupid trick to pull on someone for whom you are
> installing a system where they hope to get actual work done.
Yeah. Unfortunately, to support my radeon chipset I have to use the
unstable version apparently.
> (though it's equally possible that he did this himself, making random
> changes without understanding them in the hope of making things work)
Nope, I wouldn't even have known where to start with respect to using
unstable releases if it wasn't for the kind people on #mozilla. :-)
Nikolai Prokoschenko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>|
>| I used apt-get to get aptitude. I fired up aptitude.
>
> The writer is obviously a moron if he did this with such ease and it
> never occured to him he could've done the same for any of the other
> packages he needed.
While I wouldn't like to dispute my moronity, as I described above, I
had tried apt-get earlier with little success. I used it for aptitude
possibly because Eddy suggested I do that, or possibly because having
had a break, I was no longer locked on to the idea of getting the
source for the packages I wanted.
I think Debian's package system is remarkably nice. Unfortunately,
it's UI leaves a lot to be desired. The biggest problem is probably
the package names: "freetype", "pango", "libgtk2.0", etc, mean
absolutely nothing to me, as a user, and I really shouldn't ever have
to even see these packages.
I really think aptitude should only show end user packages with
decent, readable, localised names ("Apache Web Server", "x Chat (IRC
Client)", "Infrared Control for XMMS"). At the moment the user is
completely overwhelmed by the list of packages, which is not helped by
the fact that each one comes with a dozen or more libraries,
extensions, and so forth.
Anyway. Just a few thoughts. :-)
-- References --
[1] http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1060025253&count=1
--
Ian Hickson )\._.,--,'``.fL
"meow" /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Hamish Moffatt wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 01:33:19AM -0700, Ian Hickson wrote: > > Part of the problem I had was that I had a vague understanding that > > there was something called "apt", but that I didn't know what it was > > or how to do anything with it. The man page said to see apt-get's; > > apt-get's man page suggested the tool was a back-end but didn't really > > give any clues as to what front end to use. > > Not directly, but the "SEE ALSO" list does include dselect(8) which is > what you really should have used. The term "dselect" means nothing to me. It isn't a usable name. That's another example of the problem I mentioned. Would it not be possible for debian to have a command "setup" or "install" or something similarly named? Note that, if for some reason the user knew about the command "apropos", even that wouldn't help him -- none of dselect, aptitude, and apt-get come up for "apropos install" or "apropos setup". >> To the end user (me), apt-get is arbitrarily verbose. "Selecting >> previously deselected package libbla3.2"? "Get:1 ftp://apt sid/main >> libbla3.2 3.2.10-9 [827kB]"? >> >> Look at operating systems used by less intelligent users. They just >> see: >> >>[# ] 60% 2 minutes remaining > > I don't see how some extra verbosity hurts. It hurts because it scares users. My dad would take one look at the text, and give up. (And 15 years ago he was a VMS administrator, so it's not like he's computer illiterate.) My mum wouldn't even give the text a chance, she'd just see a wad of text with odd punctuation and run for the hills. > Frankly if verbosity loses us some users, too bad. I'm sure we pick > up more users because of the same. You will lose many more than you will gain, since there are many more computer illiterate users than geeks. > To rant a bit, the thing that bugs me the most about MS Windows is > how when it breaks randomly you can't fix it because it runs on > smoke and mirrors and doesn't give helpful information on what went > wrong. With UNIX/Linux you get details and you can fix it. Just to clarify, I've nothing against verbosity itself. /var/log, for instance, is great (although "var" is a historical name that really should be replaced by something more user friendly, but that's another story). The problem is verbosity when things don't go wrong. I'm all for a "tell me what is going on" feature for debugging. Even then, though, it would be nice if the verbose messages were consistently formatted, and used plain english instead of jargon. Error messages like "E: Invalid operation foo" are not helpful. >> I think Debian's package system is remarkably nice. Unfortunately, >> it's UI leaves a lot to be desired. The biggest problem is probably > > Which UI did you use? We have a few. apt-get is not an interface for the > Debian newbie. dselect and aptitude are GUI tools if that's what you > need. I used aptitude. It is not easy to use. It's fine for me, as I'm a geek. But if I told my mum to load aptitude and install X, she wouldn't have a clue how to do it. I just tried using deselect, to see if it is any better. The first option I'm faced with is: * 0. [A]ccessChoose the access method to use. I have no idea what that means. I tried using it (not logged in as root) and I got the following message: dselect: requested operation requires the superuser privilege Yet another example of an obscure error message. :-) -- Ian Hickson )\._.,--,'``.fL "meow" /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)
f the verbose messages were >> consistently formatted, and used plain english instead of jargon. >> Error messages like "E: Invalid operation foo" are not helpful. > > No, that's a bad idea. Take a look at IE's 404 message sometime. It's > a dumbed down version which doesn't explain jack or shitte. Again, IE's 404 message is terrible UI. It is much, much too long and is not very helpful. It is, however, a little better than: 404 Error Resource unavailable ...which is what some servers send back. (What would be better would be for browsers to leave 404 messages alone but for servers to return more useful messages, such as w3.org's 404 message, which contains some site-specific information.) > Error messages are there for people who know what they need to do. So if I do something wrong (like get the command line arguments to 'apt-get' wrong, as I did), then I don't deserve to be helped by the program? What would be wrong with a helpful message, such as: apt-get: the first argument should be one of 'install', 'remove', 'update', or another operation ...instead of just "E: Invalid operation foo"? > People who don't know what they need to do will not have that knowledge > suddenly imparted upon them by a "plain english" error message because, > without the jargon to point you in the right direction, there would be > absolutely no place to start. I'm not asking for pre-school English here. >> The first option I'm faced with is: >> >>* 0. [A]ccessChoose the access method to use. >> >> I have no idea what that means. I tried using it (not logged in as >> root) and I got the following message: > > Did you choose it to find out? As I said above, I tried using it, yes. I got this message: >>dselect: requested operation requires the superuser privilege >> >> Yet another example of an obscure error message. :-) > > Uh, no, it isn't. Superuser, aka, root. But not always root. [...] How about a message such as: dselect: to select an installation source, superuser privileges are required (try logging in as root) It's still accurate, but now it's helpful as well, and uses a more friendly voice. (This also changes "access method" to "installation source", which makes more sense to me.) Incidentally, I'm no UI expert, as I'll be the first to admit. Unfortunately we don't seem to have many of those in the free software community. -- Ian Hickson )\._.,--,'``.fL "meow" /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)
On Tue, 5 Aug 2003, Colin Watson wrote: >> >> The term "dselect" means nothing to me. It isn't a usable name. That's >> another example of the problem I mentioned. > > Tools have names, and they don't really have to be generic. I think it's > quite acceptable for the installation manual to tell you the names you > need to know to get started, and it does: see sections 8.11 to 8.15 of > <http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual>. Ok, that's fair enough. >> Note that, if for some reason the user knew about the command >> "apropos", even that wouldn't help him -- none of dselect, aptitude, >> and apt-get come up for "apropos install" or "apropos setup". > > They all show up for 'apropos package', along with a bunch of other > stuff, but yes, that would probably be a useful enhancement to at least > one of those man pages. I'm glad you agree. :-) > However, it's better for a command-line tool to be verbose up-front, > because if it crashes or blows up or just goes slightly wrong, at least > the last of which is frequent with buggy packages, we need the > information for bug reports [...]. That's probably true. It would still be nice if the verbose messages were more consistent, though. For example, 'apt-get' error messages start with 'E:' instead of the more standard 'apt-get:'. Similarly, when you do an apt-get update, you get some messages of the form: Hit ftp://apt sid/mail Packages ...some of the form: Get:1 ftp://apt ./ Packages ...and some of the form: Reading Package Lists... Done ...which is odd: why three different kinds of messages? What does "Hit" mean, as opposed to "Ign" or "Get:1"? And so on. This isn't only a problem with apt-get, of course. Error and status messages throughout the industry and in particular throught the free software world are often obscure, obtuse, and unclear. Indeed, Mozilla has its share of such problems! :-) > With a graphical front-end it's much easier to hide the verbosity and > have a "show me the installation log" option in case of error. I've seen > graphical front-ends for the Debian package management system that do > exactly this. That's cool. (aptitude doesn't, as far as I can tell.) > :-) Fundamentally, we're trying to produce the best, most stable, most > reliable, etc. system we can, not get as many users as we can. That's fair enough! :-) > That's not to say that the goal is user-hostility, just that > user-friendliness isn't always the all-defeating trump card when > discussing relatively low-level tools like dpkg and apt-get. I think that user-friendliness, even at such a low level, should still be important -- just because the user is an expert doesn't mean he wants to have to decode messages. >> although "var" is a historical name that really should be replaced by >> something more user friendly, but that's another story. > > You can't get there from here, I think. Unix admins coming to Debian > will scream blue murder if it starts being "/My Variable Data/Logs", and > that group is important to us. Note that there is at least one project which is looking at doing exactly that while retaining backwards compatability (GoboLinux). It may be worth, on the long term, looking at how it may be possible to migrate from obscure paths like "/opt", "/bin", "/sbin", "/usr/bin", etc, to more sensible names, in that way. And I would scream if you called it "/_My_ Variable Data/" too... :-P -- Ian Hickson )\._.,--,'``.fL "meow" /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: > > Or perhaps the poster should know the policy on Debian lists which is > _not_ to Cc unless explicitly requested. Noted. I was unaware of this, having not seen any mention of this policy when I subscribed. My apologies for any inconvenience caused. -- Ian Hickson )\._.,--,'``.fL "meow" /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. http://index.hixie.ch/ `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
