Livna Usability Assessment Assessment

[Robin Laing]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 12:04, kwhiskers wrote:
> 
> 
>>One SUPREME drawback I have found to all of the package managers like
>>yum, synaptic and up2date is that they only update the programs you
>>have on your system.
> 
> 
> If you use the update function...  If you read 'man yum' you'll see
> that there are other operations.
> 
> 
>>What if I want to get some new programs that I don't yet have?
> 
> 
> yum install packagename
> 
> 
>> There are 1000s of programs on the official fedora discs and on
>>extras, but there is no way for me to know what they are, so how could
>>I know whether I want to install them, or even know that they exist,
>>unless I scan the list?
> 
> 
> yum list
> yum search
> yum info
> 
> These each have options.
> 
> 
>>I have spent hours scanning the directories, manually typing rpm -qip
>>package.rpm for HUNDREDS of files, just to find out more and get a
>>COUPLE of nice gems. At least KPackage lets you have some information
>>about a program, but still, you need to look at each and every one.
> 
> 
> Try giving 'yum search' a keyword that might be found in the description
> as a starting point.  The output may not be pretty but you can capture
> it in the usual ways 'yum search video >somefile' or pipe to less where
> you can page forwards/backwards or search for additional strings. 
> Approaches like these can find something in minutes that can take days
> of browsing through even the best-laid-out visuals.
> 

We have options and sometimes, even though I do prefer to work in CLI, 
a GUI is nice.  I have used many of the yum features but this is one 
area where sometimes Yumex is just nicer.  It is also nice to be able 
to add or drop repos this way if you need something special instead of 
having to type in a long command.