AlwaysEnableUniverseMultiverse

Differences between revisions 7 and 8
⇤ ← Revision 7 as of 2006-06-28 16:26:28 →
Size: 3207
Editor: studiocity-motorola-bsr1-70-36-194-85
Comment: address some reviewer comments
← Revision 8 as of 2006-06-28 16:31:11 → ⇥
Size: 3031
Editor: studiocity-motorola-bsr1-70-36-194-85
Comment: clarify synaptic vs. gnome-app-install changes
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
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Synaptic needs better UI support to distinguish between "unsupported", "restricted" and "supported" in synaptic (and combinations are possilbe). We should change the "sections" view to include checkbuttons for "show unsupported", "show restricted" (or something along that line) so that people can see at a glance what is supported/unsupported, free/restricted. Gnome-app-install needs three checkboxes: "show unsupported", "show supported commercial", "show restricted-use", corresponding to the universe, [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/third-party-packages commercial] and restricted components, respectively. Multiverse packages will be implicitly available if both unsupported and restricted-use software are requested. The UI needs to be changed to give the checkboxes a new place. By default, restricted-use software is available, but unsupported and commercial software is not.
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Gnome-app-install needs three checkboxes: "show unsupported", "show supported commercial", "show restricted-use", corresponding to the universe, [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/third-party-packages commercial] and restricted components, respectively. Multiverse packages will be implicitly available if both unsupported and restricted-use software are requested. The UI needs to be changed to give the checkboxes a new place. By default, restricted-use software is available, but unsupported and commercial software is not. Synaptic needs A better UI to distinguish between these same categories of software. We should change the "sections" view to include the same checkboxes described for gnome-app-install.

Summary

The unsupported "universe" and "multiverse" components are currently turned off by default in ubuntu. We want to enable them by default.

Rationale

Enabling universe and multiverse is one of the first things that people usually do. We should enable them by default and make sure that we show clearly in the various GUIs what is supported and what is unsupported.

Use cases

  1. Alice wants to install a new audio-codec that is only available in universe.
  2. Bob is very interessted in gaming and thinks the list of games in main is too limited. He likes to install games from multiverse and does not care if those are not officially supported.
  3. Mallory always wondered why he had to do a additonal click and download in gnome-app-install when he wanted to install his first application from universe.

Scope

Gnome-app-install and synaptic needs to be modified to show better what component a package comes from. The installer needs to ship a sources.list with universe and multiverse enabled.

Design

Gnome-app-install needs three checkboxes: "show unsupported", "show supported commercial", "show restricted-use", corresponding to the universe, [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/third-party-packages commercial] and restricted components, respectively. Multiverse packages will be implicitly available if both unsupported and restricted-use software are requested. The UI needs to be changed to give the checkboxes a new place. By default, restricted-use software is available, but unsupported and commercial software is not.

Synaptic needs A better UI to distinguish between these same categories of software. We should change the "sections" view to include the same checkboxes described for gnome-app-install.

The installer installs Packages.gz files for all components. This ensures that the user does not have to download the full Packages file on the first apt-get update (because apt uses If-Modified-Since on the available Packages file).

Implementation

No code has been written yet.

Review comments

There should be deployment details describing what order we do things and what our backoff plan is if (for example) we only manage to implement the new checkboxes in some subset of the UIs. -iwj 22.6.06

Enabling universe by default makes a significant difference to command-line users too. Many of our users use apt-get (because that's the cultural default in many communities). Something should be done to draw the attention of a command-line user when they install unsupported software via apt-get. -iwj 22.6.06

CategorySpec

AlwaysEnableUniverseMultiverse (last edited 2008-08-06 16:23:19 by localhost)