On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 02:48 AM, sean finney wrote:
On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 03:30:10AM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:Well, the first (only!) time they will install apt/dpkg on a system is during the dbootstrap in debian-installer. I'd object very strongly if such a question were asked by d-i. Debconf is doable, but it'd have towhy would you object? yes, it's another question that they'd be asked during an install phase full of questions,
Because I'd like to Debian be installable with much fewer questions, and asking about if the user wants dialogs warning them of non-free is not needed to install the system.
but that's exactly when the installer would want to know this preference (i.e. before it dropped them into dselect for the first time).
The installer must already have the user set up his sources.list. The old boot-floppies asks a question about the use of non-free software; this could be expanded to explain how non-free is not part of Debian, may be illegal, etc. I don't think that having two dialogs ("do you want to use non-free?" and "do you want me to bug you whenever you try to use non-free?") makes too much sense.
well, i hate those when i get them uninvited (cue the paperclip asking me if i'm writing a letter), but if i've explicitly asked for it, i'd like to know how to turn it off.
One way to explicitly turn them on --- which would not bug users who don't want it --- would be to install a package. The package could work similar to apt-listchanges.
There are certainly better ways to do that 'I see you're writing a letter' thing. Having a 'New from Template...' menuitem would be much less annoying. One of the templates would be a personal letter, another a business letter, and hopefully another a death threat to Microsoft Paperclip letter.
However, an approach that is *much* better user interface comes to mind: Give dselect/aptitude/etc. a key binding to show alternatives (this is even more general!) and even display a small note at the bottom of the description:i don't think these ideas are mutually exclusive. i think that that would be really nice feature.
Strictly speaking, they are not mutually exclusive. However, if you've already been reminded gently by dselect & friends of the free alternatives, why would you want a dialog to remind you again?
and how about adding an apt-cache free-alternatives packagename while we're at it?
Good idea. We should add an 'apt-cache alternatives packagename' as well.