KPacman 0.2

cmf · 2004-04-01 16:42:28

current version: kpacman-0.2

Ok, i decided to start making a KDE pacman frontend and here's what i got after about 2 hrs (of learning kommander).
You need Quanta 3.2 installed (and inturn KDE) for the kommander executor app.
People please just leave feedback here.

EDIT:
skruw in #archlinux pkg'ed it for me, so now there is a pretty pkg for you all to enjoy.

Known Bugs:
##################
Afaik the output for upgrade will be a little messy, this is due to not having anything to pacman -Syu at time of making.. wait on the fixes.

It doesn't yet update the package database on load (yet), so you have to manually do this.
##################

Screenshots:

http://www.lougreenwood.karoo.net/kpacman/snapshot6.png
http://www.lougreenwood.karoo.net/kpacman/snapshot4.png
http://www.lougreenwood.karoo.net/kpacman/snapshot3.png
http://www.lougreenwood.karoo.net/kpacman/snapshot2.png

File:

http://www.lougreenwood.karoo.net/kpacm … pkg.tar.gz

Enjoy!

dakor · 2004-04-01 21:54:50

I like this alot hopefully someone will make a GTK2 frontend *wink *wink

cmf · 2004-04-02 09:05:19

Well i'm not going to touch gtk, not a C coder and don't know (what i pressume will be) the nasties of GTK after using QT. (all IMHO, don't take as flame )

Anyways, updates, i've started work on a native qt/c++ version, much prettier, i plan it to have the same functionality, also however i plan it to list system information and be (eventually) a more of a control center for Arch. I'm going to be looking into HAL and DBUS for things.
On the package front i plan it to handle *.pkg.tar.gz s from the file manager so you select the package and it launches the installer.

i have a 2 week holiday from college after today, so expect something by the end (i'm still learning etc).
Also any suggestions/requests just plop here, also bug reports on kpacman as that can remain as a stop-gap for now...

Thanks etc
Lou

o00o · 2004-04-02 13:11:29

i am alway suck with all package manager front end :oops:
i prefer command line :twisted:

dakor · 2004-04-02 13:16:55

Sounds great keep us updated would there be a frontend for ABs as well?

Mr Green · 2004-04-02 15:18:34

I think cmf will end up doing a linuxconf2

Mr Green

rasat · 2004-04-02 16:50:25

When developing configure tools for Arch, its good to have an idea about AL's philosphy and principles. There is currently one topic discussing about it.
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=3604

If you are looking for suggestions, what to include, please take a look at these experiments:
http://amlug.net/new-projects/pkgsweepe … eeper.html
http://amlug.org/new-projects/al-pcm/pcm.exp.html

rasat · 2004-04-03 06:47:06

I tested your kpacman and felt it will make users to forget / not to learn Arch way of using pacman, as its currently designed.

Suggestion:
When pressing any of the buttons, display the pacman command. Why I am suggesting, if KDE doesn't work one day, the user will get stuck when not knowing how to run the terminal commands of pacman

"User friendly tools (in general) make users to miss the learning of Arch Linux's configure system what they may need for post configure of new hardwares and programs".

karacus · 2004-04-03 07:47:33

Mr Green wrote:

I think cmf will end up doing a linuxconf2
Mr Green

he, he ,he

Mr Green · 2004-04-03 08:37:13

I would like to see a package called Webmin which handles alot of system admin

I know alot of people have expressed concern at SSL but with the correct plug in this can make it more secure..

I myself do most admin at the CLI...but a GUI is not always a bad thing more so for those server users....

No..if you want to learn linux (so you can fix it when it breaks) CLI is the best option & Arch is great for that..

Kpacman is a great idea & for cmf (who should be given creative Arch user of the month award) well done 8)

Don't knock till you try it

Mr Green

zeppelin · 2004-04-09 11:53:54

cfm, i believe you forgot a link to the source. plz provide one.
ty and keep up the work and users can choose between command line and GUIs. Let the user decide [that's my personal opinion on some links that were posted here]

IceRAM · 2004-05-25 16:02:33

(Ante Scriptum: I know this topic is old)

KPackage is a GUI interface to the RPM, Debian, Slackware and BSD package managers. KPackage is part of the K Desktop Environment and, as a result, it is designed to integrate with the KDE file manager.

Suggestion: why not make use of KPackage's interface and intergrate Arch's system next to the others. This would provide some kind of consistency, in my opinion, for the users coming from other distributions that used KPackage in KDE before.

I understand that it's easier to create a new application than understanding another one, but this pacman integration in KPackage could be usefull (also for 'promoting' Arch - other users might ask themselves what does that packaging system stand for).

fragilek · 2004-07-05 17:24:10

Here's a suggestion:

In order to preserve the simplicity and minimalism of Arch as we all love it, a user friendly fork should be made, re-packaged and re-branded. On boot up and/or installation (or wherever), the use could be reminded that the distro he/she is using is based upon Arch.

This would be a win-win situation: A user friendly Arch-based (but re-named) distro would attract new users to the origional, but still damn near perfect, Arch. The new user would be grateful and in turn fdisk the hell out of his bloated Windows/Mandrake/SUSE/Redhat partition

Any thoughts?
Brucey!

sarah31 · 2004-07-05 17:37:12

hmm...as far as i can tell there are two or three pacman frontends now in the works ... why don't you guys work together on these things?

as for forking .... go ahead

Dusty · 2004-07-05 17:38:59

forking has been suggested before... wish they'd get it over with. A place to send people that can't cut it with a real distro... mind you, mandrake suffices for that...

xerxes2 · 2004-07-05 20:52:42

Maybe it's best if people that make pacman guis should stop calling them names that can be taken for "official" arch stuff.
Just a thought so it not ends up in nasty fights.:D

cmf · 2004-07-06 11:29:15

What in it's title means it's an official frontend, the pacman reference? well that's because it's a KDE pacman frontend, but i suppose i could call it k-non-official-arch-linux-PACkage-MANager? Or is that too obscure?

zeppelin · 2004-07-06 13:58:45

user-friendly AL (with a fork) has been discussed in the past, and if anyone tries it, I'm sure he will fail to find a place for his Distro. (i mean if the user wants MDK it will get to MDK in the end..)

anyways, I myself wouldn't mind a complete GUI as Kpacman or other GTKpacmans try to be, eventhough I really use the CLI.

where CLI is not the best is when you want to get quick info about 2 or 3 or 4 packages and maybe take a quick look at their FILELIST. So someday I might even try to do a simple PyGTK script to do such stuff but only this, because with
pacman -Qi foo
pacman -Qi foo2
pacman -Ql foo
pacman -Ql foo2
you really need a good scrollbar hahah

sarah31 · 2004-07-06 15:32:37

i still say all you frontend designers should get together and design one gui not thre or four or whereever we are at now. whatever the end result is it should NOT be limited to one desktop or have huge depends like kdelibs or piles of gnome libs. you will limit the use of it then.

and so forth.

Dusty · 2004-07-06 15:36:30

zeppelin wrote:

pacman -Qi foo
pacman -Qi foo2
pacman -Ql foo
pacman -Ql foo2
you really need a good scrollbar hahah

You mean um.... like er... less?

Whether you use a GUI or CLI, you can only fit so much data on the screen at once... if you need a scrollbar, what's wrong with a treminal (I'm thinking konsole, but there's about 78 million other options) that supports one?

Dusty

fragilek · 2004-07-06 16:17:28

user-friendly AL (with a fork) has been discussed in the past, and if anyone tries it, I'm sure he will fail to find a place for his Distro.

Why? In my (very humble) opinion, the simplicity of Arch makes it ideal for forking and turning into a vast improvement on the current line of desktop distros.

As for the pacman frontend: when the Big Pacman Developers in the Sky make a pacman library, all the developed front ends will have to be re-written to include the new library. You can't keep using system calls, people

deepfreeze · 2004-07-06 17:15:03

Not to beat a dead horse or to be overly critical for no reason, but I've looked at the screenshots, and I really fail to see how this makes things easier for anyone. It seems like, in order to upgrade your system, one has to:

1. Start the app
2. Click the "upgrade database" button on the first tab
3. Go to the upgrade tab
4. Click on "upgrade system" button
5. (presumably) confirm the upgrade of packages shown in the dialog box.

5 Steps instead of 2 (pacman -Syu, confirm)...maybe I'm missing something.

sarah31 · 2004-07-06 17:36:23

yeah you are forgetting that your hovercraft is full of eels so it will take you a bit longer. to get to key in your two steps

cmf · 2004-07-06 18:23:48

Well i aren't dev'ing kpacman anymore, it was just a way to try out kommander....

But i'm from the intergrationalist camp, the reason why there is a KDE specific pkg mananger is so that it intergrates with the desktop, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb (OO.o?).

The reason i prefer GUI over CLI is for 3 reasons:

It's what i was raised on.

Pure asthetics, i liek it to be pretty.

Because it can be (hardware etc)...

so.. yups

Dusty · 2004-07-06 18:26:46

I believe that the relative advantage of GUI vs keyboard depends greatly on your typing speed. All people seem to be able to manipulate the mouse at about the same speed, after a bit of practice (unless they have a disability like parkinson's). However, there is a very great variety in the typing speeds; I'm not sure what top end is, some people might be able to get up to 140wpm, maybe higher... but say the average case is between 20 and 100wpm. That's a big difference.

What I'm saying is, if you type 100wpm, it takes a lot less time to type

pacman -Syu

than it does to move the mouse twice and click a few buttons. But if you type 20wpm, its maybe faster to click the buttons.

Another advantage of GUI is that the options available to you are clearly visible, whereas with CLI, you may have no idea that you have to use pacman, let alone that the options are -Syu.

However, having defended GUI thus, I have to say I think they are stupid. If people do not want to practice and learn to type at a half decent rate (say 40-50 wpm), they should not be using Linux, certainly not Arch Linux, and probably not computers at all. "Computers for the masses" is something that makes me very very angry, but... well, no sense getting on that rant.

Further, if users do not want to take the time to check the documentation and find out what the commands are and learn how to use man pages, they probably should not be using Linux, and should CERTAINLY DEFINATELY AND ABSOLUTELY not be using Arch Linux.

Moreover, creating applications that will attract this sort of user to Arch Linux is, in my opinion, bad for the distro. The users will get frustrated that the GUI app doesn't do everything and they have to type a little (god forbid!). They'll start saying bad things about Arch, and will continually hound the developers and the community users for help that they should be able to get with a little effort of their own. Free support means its volunteered, and that means that the people giving the support have the right to quit and the right to get angry... it's not good to have users that make the helpers quit.

How am I doing Sarah?

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2004-04-01 16:42:28

KPacman 0.2

#2 2004-04-01 21:54:50

Re: KPacman 0.2

#3 2004-04-02 09:05:19

Re: KPacman 0.2

#4 2004-04-02 13:11:29

Re: KPacman 0.2

#5 2004-04-02 13:16:55

Re: KPacman 0.2

#6 2004-04-02 15:18:34

Re: KPacman 0.2

#7 2004-04-02 16:50:25

Re: KPacman 0.2

#8 2004-04-03 06:47:06

Re: KPacman 0.2

#9 2004-04-03 07:47:33

Re: KPacman 0.2

#10 2004-04-03 08:37:13

Re: KPacman 0.2

#11 2004-04-09 11:53:54

Re: KPacman 0.2

#12 2004-05-25 16:02:33

Re: KPacman 0.2

#13 2004-07-05 17:24:10

Re: KPacman 0.2

#14 2004-07-05 17:37:12

Re: KPacman 0.2

#15 2004-07-05 17:38:59

Re: KPacman 0.2

#16 2004-07-05 20:52:42

Re: KPacman 0.2

#17 2004-07-06 11:29:15

Re: KPacman 0.2

#18 2004-07-06 13:58:45

Re: KPacman 0.2

#19 2004-07-06 15:32:37

Re: KPacman 0.2

#20 2004-07-06 15:36:30

Re: KPacman 0.2

#21 2004-07-06 16:17:28

Re: KPacman 0.2

#22 2004-07-06 17:15:03

Re: KPacman 0.2

#23 2004-07-06 17:36:23

Re: KPacman 0.2

#24 2004-07-06 18:23:48

Re: KPacman 0.2

#25 2004-07-06 18:26:46

Re: KPacman 0.2

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