GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

mcubednyc · 2004-05-28 12:06:14

I don't understand the attitude about the CLI being somehow more legitimate or proper than a GUI. I don't have a whole lot of experience in this realm, but when I was using a Debian-based distro, I tried to learn to use apt from the command line and synaptic. I thought it was a question of preference -- that is, I wanted to see which I felt more comfortable using, which I thought I got more out of, whether there were certain features/aspects of one I preferred to the other, or certain tasks I found easier with one than with the other. GUI's aren't necessarily the simplest or fastest ways to accomplish any given task; sometimes they introduced needless complexity, sometimes they limit options you would be able to access more easily from the command line, sometimes they cause problems you wouldn't have on the command line. But for other tasks they introduce features that enable you to accomplish your goals more quickly and easily than you could from the command line. And most people tend to find them more intuitive and easier to learn. Personally, I thought I benefitted from using CLI apt and from using synaptic -- using each method helped me better understand how the whole package management thing worked. I never thought synaptic was less legitimate, nor did using it make me feel like I was cheating or not doing the proper thing. And I wouldn't have come to grips with pacman nearly as quickly as I did if I hadn't had some previous experience with apt, so I would say my experience with synaptic was important for helping me get up-to-speed with how Arch handles package management.

OTOH, playing around with Mandrake's GUI for urpmi was a complete waste of my time -- I found it clunkly, confusing, and badly implemented. But I wouldn't say that that means "the GUI" is less valid as a learning tool or even as a method for package management, if the GUI in question is done well. I don't think having a GUI for pacman will dumb things down, unless it's a dumb GUI. Frankly, unless Arch changes its character completely (which isn't likely), no one who is afraid of the command line will be using it, at least not for long. The availability of a pacman GUI for those who prefer it won't change that.

As for me, I would probably use it for the same things I ended up using synaptic for -- searching. It's much handier (IMO) to have the homepage URL of a particular app I don't know about directly available from the interface of the tool I'm using, rather than having to search Google or find it on Arch's website package list (which is incomplete ... it doesn't include all the software available in the TURs), then go to the homepage from there. I doubt I'd use it for updating my system, and probably not for installing individual apps I already know I want to install. Still, I would find it useful.

Mr Green · 2004-05-28 12:14:11

Read Eric S. Raymond......

Dusty · 2004-05-28 15:05:03

mcubednyc wrote:

I don't understand the attitude about the CLI being somehow more legitimate or proper than a GUI.

I didn't say its more legitimate or proper, its just more efficient and faster.

The problem with CLI is that it doesn't maintain much state; its up to the user to remember where s/he's at and to remember what commands to use. Clicking an icon to open a program and then typing in a name and clicking "search" is much easier to remember than pacman -Ss name, but if you did a KLM analysis of how long each action took, you would find that the CLI is faster.

Of course, typing in a name and pressing tab to go to the search button speeds things up a bit, and if you had the program hotkeyed instead of having to click the icon to open it, that would be more efficient too. And it all depends on typing speed...

As yet, CLI is, IMHO, the most efficient method, if you can keep all that state in your mind. However, a properly designed GUI would be better if it could provide you with the state you need AND not impair your speed. There was a discussion a while back on how crummy the desktop metaphor is; that's why I use ion as a window manager. But most of my windows contain terminals, not GUIs.

Maybe I'm just weird.

Dusty

standsolid · 2004-05-28 15:36:43

Neje wrote:

Amidst all the arguing about what is right for Arch, don't forget that this Pacman-GUI would be a third-party-like app.
I don't see apeiro immediately saying "Oh, thank God, somebody wrote a Pacman-GUI, I now will integrate it into the Arch base system immediately although it completely tosses out whatever philosophy I had, but hey, I was getting kinda sick of philosophy anyway. Now for the next task: making controlling Pacman in the CLI impossible. We are now a noob-hand-holding distro, there's no point in confusing the noobs with nonsensical possibilities like controlling things in a CLI."
;-)
By the way, synaptic didn't immediately turn pure Debian into a noob-hand-holding distro, did it? I used synaptic a few times, for scrolling around the categories to see how many packages Debian had to offer. That was it, really. If I could do stuff like that in pacman-gui, maybe I would.
So, you have my blessing for a pacman-gui. If it turns out to be crap, I'll know it probably was a bad idea right from the start, and I will not use it again ;-). If it turns out to be kinda handy for some operations, maybe I'll use it for those. If it turns out to be absolutely magnificent for everything you throw at it, I'll use it, and use it a lot. That's all there is to it.
If you however decide that it's probably not worth it to spend time programming this pacman-gui, I will respect your decision as well. Really ;-)
And about forcing people to learn, we're not the Arch Linux Educational Program, are we? Where does it end? I'm not worthy to use Samba because I don't really understand its inner workings? I'm not worthy to compile programs because I don't know why it just compiles instead of spitting out an error?
Neje
P.S. I'm not trying to offend anyone, honestly, I'm just trying to say that standsolid can write a pacman-gui if he wants to, and we can use or not use his pacman-gui if we want to. Let's not turn every idea into a "is this idea in accordance with the direction in which Arch should be headed"-debate.

I just read your post, thanks.

I was kind of asking two things -- Would nayone use thins, and what was the archer's perspective on GUI tools. So I understand why people will give "CLI is better, end of story" messages to my quote. You also made a good oint about this being a third party app. I'm sure if I do it well enough, people will witch that it depends on KDE libs or whatever, and will make their own GTK one.

It's not going to be forced, it's a choice...

Neje · 2004-05-28 18:41:20

I just read your post, thanks.
I was kind of asking two things -- Would nayone use thins, and what was the archer's perspective on GUI tools. So I understand why people will give "CLI is better, end of story" messages to my quote. You also made a good oint about this being a third party app. I'm sure if I do it well enough, people will witch that it depends on KDE libs or whatever, and will make their own GTK one.
It's not going to be forced, it's a choice...

I agree with you, and I know you were asking for opinions, so it was to be expected that people gave their opinions.

But I've seen it happen here before, instead of saying "I would like to see this, because [...]" or "You wouldn't see me using this, because [...]" some say "This should not happen in Arch!" "There should not be [...] in Arch, Arch is about [...] and not about [...]". What follows is a debate about what [Arch] Linux is all about. I can imagine it's not very encouraging for people like yourself, who'd like to contribute something they think could be useful.

Glad to see some more posts in this thread saying things like "Who are we to say what standsolid should or shouldn't do" and "I'd be interested in this". Because it could be interesting. Even if it turns out to be useless (which I don't believe) we'll know why it's useless and why we shouldn't attempt anything like it ever again. Arch won't be damaged by it....
Whoops, sorry, I'm beginning to repeat myself. Bye now ;-)

Neje

cjdj · 2004-05-28 20:33:29

As a relatively new archer, and having just replaced windows on 4 of my machines with arch, I'm glad to see people like standsolid wishing to improve arch in a way that he can.

I understand the arch philosophy is to give control to the user. let the user include the things that the user wants. A simple package system that makes a nice clean system.

But I dont feel that we should limit the options available just to keep arch in a clinical state. Command line only? Then why have a KDE or gnome package? Why even allow x at all? Because some people find it MORE PRODUCTIVE to operate in a windowed environment than the switch between consoles.

I for one am glad that standsolid has created a pacman GUI. I personally would not use it, because I am familiar with the pacman command line. However, I removed windows from my wifes machine that she uses for web-browsing and email. It really does not matter what she does with that machine, especially since it is so very easy to re-install arch and there is no data stored on there that cant be replaced. She is not very computer literate, but Arch is the perfect distro for her. It doesnt have all the crap loaded that suse and redhat have, not to mention it is faster. I set it up for her, and she uses it. So that I dont have to do it from time to time, I would love to install the pacman gui on her machine and tell her to do an update every so often, and she would do it. A gui is perfect for her. If there was no gui, then I would have probably setup a script or two, with icons on the desktop that she could do, and looking at the command-line result would be somewhat confusing to her and she might not know if an upgrade was successful, but a GUI would be totally obvious to her.

So what is more efficient to her? Obviously the GUI is. the CLI is far more efficient to me.

What I DONT like about SuSE is their package management system. The GUI for it looks just like the ncurses one, and I couldnt get either one of them to work properly for me. And when I did an upgrade it let me remove several packages that others depended on and I got a completely unusable system. Not to mention that it took forever for it to go thru a bunch of 'linker' files to keep track of everything.

Performing an update on arch is fast and simple. The CLI is the core, and the package management system is designed around that. A gui is just a front-end to the command-line system (design). Yast (from suse) is obviously done the other way around. It is totally GUI and if there is a CLI (not ncurses) equivilent, I didnt see it, and it certainly wasnt designed that way.

So if people say that a GUI is bad, it might be because a system designed as a gui has some fundamental flaws and issues. But a GUI front-end to a CLI based designed system, I have no problems with whatsoever.

Xentac · 2004-05-28 20:53:02

Neje wrote:

But I've seen it happen here before, instead of saying "I would like to see this, because [...]" or "You wouldn't see me using this, because [...]" some say "This should not happen in Arch!" "There should not be [...] in Arch, Arch is about [...] and not about [...]". What follows is a debate about what [Arch] Linux is all about. I can imagine it's not very encouraging for people like yourself, who'd like to contribute something they think could be useful.
Glad to see some more posts in this thread saying things like "Who are we to say what standsolid should or shouldn't do" and "I'd be interested in this". Because it could be interesting. Even if it turns out to be useless (which I don't believe) we'll know why it's useless and why we shouldn't attempt anything like it ever again. Arch won't be damaged by it....
Whoops, sorry, I'm beginning to repeat myself. Bye now ;-)

Have you seen any of the devs comment on this thread yet? I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the first (Dusty does count too though). Have you noticed what they said? It usually goes something like this, "sure, do what you like. I don't think I'll use it, but fill your boots." There are a lot of zealotous users who like to try to boss other users around around here. One thing they do, that you don't see everywhere else, is attack the issue instead of the person. This I think is good.

I'm not imposing any opinions in this post. I'm just putting things into perspective.

aCoder · 2004-05-28 20:58:39

Really, I just like to see someone start a project with something in mind. I don't care what it does, or even if it works, but if it has some purpose and it's open source, it's good for the community. Personally, if there was a GUI frontend to pacman that I thought was really intuitive, I would probably use it, but it's not something I need so much that I'd take care of it myself. From the screens, it doesn't look like something I'd use, but I might at least try it when it's ready.

xerxes2 · 2004-05-28 22:56:49

I havn't post in this thread yet, it seems like there been some flaming!
But I just couldn't resist any longer

standsolid wrote:

people will witch that it depends on KDE libs or whatever, and will make their own GTK one.

This is Pacman for Grandma.
Happy weekend!
Edit: Do you think the search button is to big?

aCoder · 2004-05-28 23:06:35

Hey! I can't find that in any repo! Where'd you get it?

Zephirias · 2004-05-29 00:17:03

That's nice...though you're right, the search button could be a tad smaller...

Dusty · 2004-05-29 00:32:05

That search button should be *bigger* and should have "search" written on it in at least 20 different languages... :-D

deja vu...

Dusty

Dusty · 2004-05-29 00:39:18

Xentac wrote:

Have you seen any of the devs comment on this thread yet? I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the first (Dusty does count too though).

I meant to disagree with this, but I forgot. I don't want to count! I'm opinionated, see, and it would be so hard for me to act mature and ignore stuff like you true developers do. I'm just a documentor.

Dusty

sarah31 · 2004-05-29 00:39:22

Xentac wrote:

Neje wrote:
But I've seen it happen here before, instead of saying "I would like to see this, because [...]" or "You wouldn't see me using this, because [...]" some say "This should not happen in Arch!" "There should not be [...] in Arch, Arch is about [...] and not about [...]". What follows is a debate about what [Arch] Linux is all about. I can imagine it's not very encouraging for people like yourself, who'd like to contribute something they think could be useful.
Glad to see some more posts in this thread saying things like "Who are we to say what standsolid should or shouldn't do" and "I'd be interested in this". Because it could be interesting. Even if it turns out to be useless (which I don't believe) we'll know why it's useless and why we shouldn't attempt anything like it ever again. Arch won't be damaged by it....
Whoops, sorry, I'm beginning to repeat myself. Bye now ;-)
Have you seen any of the devs comment on this thread yet? I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the first (Dusty does count too though). Have you noticed what they said? It usually goes something like this, "sure, do what you like. I don't think I'll use it, but fill your boots." There are a lot of zealotous users who like to try to boss other users around around here. One thing they do, that you don't see everywhere else, is attack the issue instead of the person. This I think is good.
I'm not imposing any opinions in this post. I'm just putting things into perspective.

unfortunately, xentac, people seem to find it easier to to attack the person. i chose to "attack" one person's points and i believe it was the one that started the post.

i try to make people understand my point of view. i am not trying to say i am right or not it is just the opinion asked for. i couldn't care less if there is a pacman gui or not but i will say as much as some may think it would be a benefit the idea of dumbing down arch just irks me because it pure laziness that keeps them from learning it.

standsolid....since you liked using my name i will comment personally to one of your "points"....

How can you say the smae person who works Twelve hour days and can't afford the time to take 5 minutes to learn pacman? All they want to do is check their email, read some news, and go to bed. Yourself, me, and many other archers have gripes with other distros because of certain lacking features. Arch is the closest thing to perfect I've seen, and I certainly wnat to share such a simple, quick, lightweight distro with others -- even if they don't want to learn the syntax for pacman.

are you trying to imply that i don't work?. i work eight hours a day six days a week and several more on other projects. when i was a package maintainer for arch i worked my eight hour stint at work then came home and worked on arch for eight or more hours.

if i can afford the time to learn how to use pacman, make and maintain packages then i am sure anyone can.

finally...i am not opposed to guis or gui apps infact i use many but what i do grow tired of is people trying to justify how lazy they are and how much they want other people to make their life easier or not. making linux easy is not the main goal of arch. being light weight (ie not kludged up with useless crud) is. so if the goal of arch is not to make linux easy why should they cowtow to that audience.

basically i just do not see a use for a pacman gui when it is as simple as typing your name.

anyway enough of this thread have fun and enjoy working on this project. [not sarcasm] I wish you the best of luck with your project too.[/not sarcasm]

Neje · 2004-05-29 01:01:19

Xentac wrote:

Have you seen any of the devs comment on this thread yet? I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the first (Dusty does count too though). Have you noticed what they said? It usually goes something like this, "sure, do what you like. I don't think I'll use it, but fill your boots." There are a lot of zealotous users who like to try to boss other users around around here. One thing they do, that you don't see everywhere else, is attack the issue instead of the person. This I think is good.
I'm not imposing any opinions in this post. I'm just putting things into perspective.

I had a longer post prepared, but when I pressed the preview button, I saw sarah31's post appear.
Let me just say I agree with what Xentac said. Most of the devs are pretty relaxed. How can somebody have his foot for an avatar and not be relaxed? :-)
I might have overstated my point before, but I wasn't trying to offend.

About Pacman-GUI
This program is still in experimental stage. It is looking for someone who can actually make it work

Press the search button to find him :-) You know you want to...

Dusty · 2004-05-29 05:27:56

Neje wrote:

Most of the devs are pretty relaxed. How can somebody have his foot for an avatar and not be relaxed? :-)

Eh? Compared to his butt, a foot is pretty tense!

standsolid · 2004-05-29 06:45:44

sarah31 wrote:

standsolid....since you liked using my name i will comment personally to one of your "points"....
How can you say the smae person who works Twelve hour days and can't afford the time to take 5 minutes to learn pacman? All they want to do is check their email, read some news, and go to bed. Yourself, me, and many other archers have gripes with other distros because of certain lacking features. Arch is the closest thing to perfect I've seen, and I certainly wnat to share such a simple, quick, lightweight distro with others -- even if they don't want to learn the syntax for pacman.
are you trying to imply that i don't work?. i work eight hours a day six days a week and several more on other projects. when i was a package maintainer for arch i worked my eight hour stint at work then came home and worked on arch for eight or more hours.

I'm not sure what you meant by me using your name... I was merely responding to yoru post. It's like when you're talking to someone in the "real world" and refer to them as "Pat" or "Chris" or "Robin" or "Terry" or "Drew" or "Ryan"... I'm not attacking you, I'm providing a counter-point to each of yours. I apologize if you felt I was attacking you as a person, but I feel your opinion of GUIs come from previous experience, and I want to convince users like yourself that GUIs are not the devil. I try not to force my view, but just want to present facts/obsrvations. Please don't take this discussion personally. I play devil's advocate on many-a-discusison just because it helps the learning process, if nothing else.

I personally want to thank you for your contributions -- I haven't been using arch long enough to look at previous package maintainers and what have you, But any contribution of time to an OSS project is comendable. Without people like you, I wouldn't have a repo as nice as arch has now. (this was all not sarcasm, by the way)

sarah31 wrote:

if i can afford the time to learn how to use pacman, make and maintain packages then i am sure anyone can.

unfortuantely, sarah31, this is a very unsafe assumption. Some people CAN'T (i mean CAN'T) understand the concept of updates on Windows. How the hell are they going to understand a black window with foreign white text on it?

sarah31 wrote:

[not sarcasm] I wish you the best of luck with your project too.[/not sarcasm]

Paul · 2004-05-29 18:10:29

Some people CAN'T (i mean CAN'T) understand the concept of updates on Windows. How the hell are they going to understand a black window with foreign white text on it?

If people can't understand pacman then they are in for a tough time.
This is from "About Arch Linux":
Arch Linux is an i686-optimized linux distribution targeted at competent linux users (read: not afraid of the commandline)

Fuzzy Acceptance part:
Its great that you are contributing btw

Mr Green · 2004-05-30 08:23:25

O no someones going to say Arch is for the L33t

Use what you like ... We all use GUI's hell I'm using one now to make this post....

Mr Green :cry:

aCoder · 2004-05-31 03:46:04

Hey! Let's get back to the real issue here: How do I get this app that tells me how to make swiss cheese?

apeiro · 2004-05-31 17:52:27

You've got my blessing, standsolid.

Anybody that knows this distro at all is well aware that Archers would never be forced to use a GUI when a perfectly usable CLI is available. That would fly in the face of our philosophy and that's just plain bad.

I think the project will do well if it's carried through. Most of the posters in this thread have said they wouldn't use a pacman frontend, but I have a feeling that a lot of users will find their way into it once it's released and mature. I have a few GUI-loving friends of my own that would love a pacman frontend.

I won't be using it (except to gaze at the prettiness every now n' then ) but I'm glad that there are Archers taking this kind of initiative. That's when I get the "warm fuzzy" feelings.

Zephirias · 2004-05-31 17:55:18

The Man has spoken! Yay!

Mr Green · 2004-05-31 18:53:00

I agree .... go for it 8)

RTF · 2004-06-01 08:15:48

I came to the party a bit late but I wanted to add my two cents. I would use a Pacman gui, and I would find it especially helpful in browsing through packages, seeing if there's something I might be interested in. Finding information is probably the weakest point of all CLIs, and that goes for Pacman as well; anything except a targeted search becomes tedious.

The focus of my IceWM setup is to cover that need for having my info handy. I have GKrellM set up at one side, with its various nifty indicators, and perhaps more importantly GKrellMLaunch. I put all the most-used apps like Mozilla and OpenOffice in GKrellMLaunch, and I put everything else(Stepmania, Xkill, Rhythmbox) in the start menu.

I've always opened xterms to do my regular Pacman -Syu but if a GUI were around I would probably put it into my GKrellLaunch and open that instead - I wouldn't have to do the mouse/keyboard switch then.

StratoS · 2004-06-01 15:13:44

I would love a GUI pacman. Although i would certainly prefer a GTK/Gnome one.
although CLI working has it's charm, simply leaning over hardly even looking at what you r doing, reorganising your files a bit.
throwing away folders without double checking your / home/user/stuff /* in a rm -rf cmd.

also simpy double clicking a movie file, just based on the thumb nail to see which epsiode it is.
is sometimes wonderfull instead of typing mplayer -vo sdl -fs -ao alsa9 -pp 9 -vop "extra-stereo:1.5" -sub en
or whatever the command was.

but besides those occasions i rather like my terms
becouse although i don't have to type half a page of text to get something done.
that half a page is going to be typed way faster then my mouse is ever going to crawl towards some obscure button or tab.

anyhow, when will the gtk/gnome port be done.

Arch Linux

#51 2004-05-28 12:06:14

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#52 2004-05-28 12:14:11

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#53 2004-05-28 15:05:03

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#54 2004-05-28 15:36:43

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#55 2004-05-28 18:41:20

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#56 2004-05-28 20:33:29

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#57 2004-05-28 20:53:02

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#58 2004-05-28 20:58:39

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#59 2004-05-28 22:56:49

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#60 2004-05-28 23:06:35

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#61 2004-05-29 00:17:03

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#62 2004-05-29 00:32:05

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#63 2004-05-29 00:39:18

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#64 2004-05-29 00:39:22

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#65 2004-05-29 01:01:19

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#66 2004-05-29 05:27:56

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#67 2004-05-29 06:45:44

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#68 2004-05-29 18:10:29

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#69 2004-05-30 08:23:25

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#70 2004-05-31 03:46:04

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#71 2004-05-31 17:52:27

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#72 2004-05-31 17:55:18

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#73 2004-05-31 18:53:00

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#74 2004-06-01 08:15:48

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

#75 2004-06-01 15:13:44

Re: GUI pacman? [update: new screenshots on page 7]

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