On Tuesday 31 May 2005 19:06, Cesar Martinez Izquierdo wrote: > El Martes 31 Mayo 2005 19:41, Mark Edgington escribió: > > Pardon me if this has already been discussed, but I wonder if there > > should be a tag in debian packages indicating the a minimum proficiency > > level that a user should have in order for a package to be useful to the > > user. > > > > For example, a package like OpenOffice or Firefox are end-user > > applications which most users (even those completely unfamiliar with > > linux) would have a good chance at understanding and being able to use. > > On the other hand, a package like nmap might not be something my > > Grandma would be wanting to use every day, and thus it might be better > > to have a higher proficiency-level rating for such a package. > > > > The motivation for such a thing is that it would make it possible for > > package-management tools to operate in an "easy" mode which would only > > display (or display in a separate category) packages which have a > > proficiency-rating < x. This would be very handy in that it would > > permit using Debian and an apt frontend like synaptic to make it easy > > for more-or-less "computer-illiterate" people to install new packages > > which match their skill-level, without having to wade th > > rough hundreds > > of libraries and technical tools which they would never use. > > > > Perhaps there's a better way to accomplish this, but the ability to > > limit the display of packages in this manner is something that it seems > > would be beneficial to have. > > > > -Mark > > I find it a quite interesting idea. If it was implemented, there should be > an scale, so that maintainers have some reference in order to tag their > packages.
This would be rather arbitrary and probably be liable to cause disagreements. I think you could get much the same affect with some well chosen tags and debtags. e.g. you could filter on: command line only tools enterprise tools (e.g. groupware, RDBMS) scientific tools (e.g. octave, R) sysadmin tools (e.g. mrtg) Alternatively create a custom distro based on Debian with only the required packages installed by default.
