Russ Allbery wrote: > I think it's also particularly annoying for our two major recommended > package installation interfaces, aptitude and apt-get, to do the opposite > thing by default with this core of a feature. What a recipe for > confusion for the average user who doesn't know the history and doesn't > choose them based on their Recommends-handling behavior! We shouldn't be > substituting tool selection for configuration.
Exactly. One thing I quite often experienced by introducing people to Debian is that they get all confused about the different behaviors of apt-get and aptitude. To most users, those tools are a way to install packages, and not knowing their history leads to confusing why they do the same task in different ways. Most of those are totally fine with installing "junk", as it was called by others on this thread. They like it because having all x-drivers on their system allows them to exchange graphic cards without much effort. It's done rarely, I know. But most of them are unexperienced users of either Debian or Linux and want things to "just work" which is the Debian way. And the Social Contract is about our users, and I think an identical behaviour in the apt tools and having Recommends is what the majority of users want. I use aptitude for my everyday work. On my desktop, I really appreciate pulling in Recommends. On cluster compute nodes, I don't. But I can turn it of easily without being "forced" to use apt-get just because I'm on a different type of machine. Compute nodes are what I'd call an "unusual installation", as the Policy states it for Recommends. So are Embedded Devices. (Of course, the definition of "usual" is always vague.) IMHO, having apt-get to install recommended packages is a good choice. It's not hard for the user with special needs to change it, even on a lot of boxes. It's the current Recommends: fields that are broken, not the tools. But IANADD. Best regards Manuel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
