PackageKit major annoyances

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Mark <markg85 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. While i was searching for my packages to install (in this case
> mplayer) i was looking at the bold font. My first idea that that was
> the name of the package but no someone somewhere decided to make the
> short package description in BOLD and first.. making it hard to find
> the package name itself because that's just not there (the rpm name
> is! but the package name that is defined in the rpm spec file is
> nowhere to be found. I think that should be written in bold then the
> description below it and the rpm name + architecture should not even
> be there

The decision to highlight the bolded information has been an upstream
design choice, and its been a subject of debate even among fedora
developers in the past.  It's upstream's design choice, and upstream
means for it to be consistent across distributions.  To get it changed
you'll have to get upstream to change it, and that may require a
cross-distribution consensus discussion.

I'm not sure what you are refering to by "packagename"
I see the packagename-version-release.arch  just underneath the bolded
summary text in my mplayer search listings at the moment.  The
packagename is encoded in the rpm name is it not?


> 2. WTF All my packages are double... which ones do i need?
That I don't currently see happening on my x86 system. Is yours a
64bit system? Do you see a 32bit AND a 64bit version for each package?
If so, those are not technically duplicates.  I do a search for
mplayer on my 32bit F10 system and I get only one listing per item, no
duplicates.   Now maybe the UI for multiarch situations isn't optimal,
but if it isn't its a discussion for upstream development.

> 3. Oke, mplayer is done installing now and now it asks me to run it..why?

Another upstream design decision. This is functionality that shows up
with applications which appear in the menus and have .desktop files.
installing mplayer did not do this. installing gnome-mplayer did. I
don't see an obvious way to turn this off.

>  4. Another (minor) thing.
This may not be PackageKit's fault directly, but maybe a problem with
the default authorization policy provided managed by PolicyKit.

If you open up the Authorizations gui.  System->Administration->Authorizations
And look under the packagekit actions which have authorizations
associated with them:
  org.freedesktop.packagekit.system-trust-signing-key

This action controls when a key is to be imported into the rpm
keyring.  By default is configured to require admin authorization each
time. It could be changed to automatically allow console user to do it
without a authorization check.  is that default the wrong default? I
don't know. If its the wrong policy for you personally, that's easily
editted in the Authorizations gui.

Let me stress this. PackageKit is asking PolicyKit for action
authentication. PackageKit is not deciding to ask you for a password.
PolicyKit is.  PolicyKit has default policies in place for a number of
actions. Those policies can be edited to change the behaviour if the
default isn't to your liking.

Yes the PolicyKit idea is sort of new so it might take a little
getting use to. But once you get it, its quite flexible in allowing
you to define an authorization policy that makes sense for you.  Maybe
you just want to authorize as the sysadmin once per session for all
actions..you can do that. Maybe you just want the active console user
to be authorized without a password for any PolicyKit controlled
action... you can do that too.  Maybe you want to grant or deny
specific users access to specific actions regardless if they are at
the console or not... you can do that too.

-jef