What next?

[Paul A. Houle]

On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 23:15:54 +0100, Mike Hearn <mike at navi.cx> wrote:

> On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 17:46:33 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
>> > BTW., how does osx do installs (just bringing up the meta-file
>> > installer thingy again. Feel free not to answer)?
>>
>> their package system, umm, err, sucks.
>
> 99.9% of users seem to disagree with you, judging by how often "Linux
> should use appfolders like Macs do" is heard on various forums and  
> mailing
> lists.
>
> MacOS X packaging works reliably for end users, 100% of the time, and
> from that perspective it doesn't matter how many features it has or
> doesn't have, it's better than yum/rpm/any Linux packaging system.
>

	This is something I've thought about:  how much would the shell slow down  
if we had a very long $PATH,  so that we can give applications independent  
bin directories?

	I love my Mac Mini but I find the 'Applications' item in the finder to be  
a painful way to find and run applications:  I find myself using the dock  
very little,  and I greatly prefer the 'Start' button on Windows and the  
imitations thereof under Unix.

	A downside to giving each app a directory is that it's harder to use  
partitions to isolate different kind of things,  an art that I've been  
learning over time (and particular inspired by the Solaris shop I work  
with that uses something much like LVM,  allocate a minimal amount of  
space for each partition,  leave a large free pool,  and grow the  
partitions online over tine)