Am Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:32:00 +0200 schrieb Susan Dittmar: > Helping users with the day-to-day administrational > work was the main reason why linux distributions have been invented.
Well this may have been the reason. And this is also the reason why package managers like the one from miktex has been invented (and I like the ease with which I can install packages today.) But looking at the discussion here *now* package managers in Linux distros are meant to prevent users to do fatal damage to their system, to avoid dramatic security problems, to avert chaos. They are no longer mainly a help, they are a mean of control. It looks as if windows and linux have changed their roles: Long time windows users were the ones which were supposed to be so dump that they could only use applications which could be installed by simple click on a setup.exe and who must be protected from more complicated tasks. And everybody feared that windows would gain to much control over the applications installed on the user pc (microsoft got attacked when it dared to bundle a user application like the internet explorer with the OS). But now it looks as if the users of the so-called "open and free" OS Linux are tying themselves to their disto manufacturer and their installation tools in a way no windows user has ever been tyed to a windows OS. -- Ulrike Fischer -------------------------------------------------- Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
