No yum GUI in core?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sat, 2006-04-15 at 03:05 -0500, Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> On 4/15/06, Michael J Knox <michael at knox.net.nz> wrote:
> > Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> > > Is it just me or is there no GUI to make use of Yum available from the
> > > CD installtion? If so, would the GUI be preferable for people not
> > > comfortable with using the command line ?
> >
> > There is "yumex" but its in extras and does require to install it from a
> > shell. However, once its installed, you're set.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> That's what I thought. Don't get me wrong, I prefer using the command
> line myself. But doesn't having to install yumex via the console, in
> order to not have to use the console (esp. in the case of newbies)
> kinda take away from the whole point?
> 
> I say this because there seems to be a perception outside of Fedora
> that we (Fedora) has no package management, far less a GUI for the
> package management. And I see this on public tech forums. (from
> supposed geeks)

For the first few releases, Fedora didn't have a good built-in GUI for
software management.  The {system,redhat}-config-packages tool acted in
the manner you were talking about earlier in this thread -- i.e. it
worked only with the shipped distro CDs, and lost functionality as you
updated the system.  The up2date tool worked to supplant a lot of this
functionality, but was broken by FC4; fortunately yum solved a lot of
problems and people naturally migrated to it.

> Is there any particular reason why yumex does not come on the install
> media? I think it is fair to say that people new to Fedora (or linux
> for that matter) would appreciate that.

My take on it, part empirical and part opinion, is that its GUI is
poorly designed, too complex for new users.  It does expose a lot of
useful yum features, which is why many experienced users like it.  It is
simply too confusing for a new user, though, and I'm pretty sure it's
not very adherent to the GNOME HIG.  (The pirut and/or pup tools might
have specific HIG problems too, but they seem better designed in that
respect at first blush.)  Plus, yumex duplicates a lot of the
functionality in pirut and pup, so by definition that kind of strikes it
from being considered for Core, AIUI.

> And on a side note, Fedora could do with some better PR.

Your help is needed in the Marketing group, then:

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
 Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
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