[maemo-developers] What category should network filesystems like OpenAFS go under?

[From: Mike Lococo]

>> Since there's a requirement to use the terminal to configure it, it is
>> no extra step to require the user to use apt-get to install it.
> 
> <snip>
>
> I don't think we really want to be encouraging people to use apt-get, 
> particularly while "apt-get upgrade" can break your system.

Absolutely agree.  While I understand the impetus to save users from 
having to wade through lots of apps that don't interest them, handling 
the installation of some applications very differently than others is a 
non-scalable approach to the problem.

> But I do think that there should be a category specifically for command line 
> tools so that people who do not use the command line don't have to waste time 
> on them.  And I also agree that a GUI configuration dialogue for a system 
> tool is much better than expecting someone to edit a config file.

This stikes me as a similarly flawed approach.  Terminal-based 
applications have the same range of functionality that graphical 
applications have, so you either need to duplicate your category list in 
two places (and force users interested in both types to look twice), or 
you stop categorizing terminal-apps altogether (and leave users that use 
them with the bad categorization problem we have now).

Some alternate approaches...

- Standard labels: A -cli suffix at the end of each app name would allow 
users to quickly recognize and skip terminal apps if they aren't 
interested in them.  Even just including a note in the description would 
be sufficient in my mind.

- Debtags-based searches: Give AppMgr a real search facility, and ship 
canned-queries like "graphical apps", "terminal apps", etc.

- Advanced-Browsing mode: With proper package classification and the 
existence of extras-devel to hide truly dangerous apps, red-pill (or 
something similar) could be made into a more discoverable "advanced 
browsing" mode that hides end-user apps that are likely to be 
uninteresting to grandma-types that folks seem so concerned about.  Give 
it a normal preference checkbox, and have it do some debtag or other 
magic to hide complicated stuff, while making it easy and safe for users 
who want to see the full range of available software.  I do think any 
binary solution like this which is aimed at hiding apps that are "too 
hard" will ultimately prove to be unscalable and unhealthy for the 
community, which depends on folks discovering challenges which interest 
them and choosing to learn something new.  If the binary filtering is at 
least easy to disable/ignore, as proposed above, the damage will be 
minimal though.

Thanks,
Mike Lococo