On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 08:54:29AM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote:
> 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.
and i guess that's where we disagree. if i wanted a non-interactive
install i'd use FAI :) personally i think that it's a perfectly
reasonable question to ask for a medium priority install.
> 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.
sure it does. like "you have non-free installed on your system. debian
prides itself for providing a completely free OS, and there may be
freely available alternatives to some of your packages. would you
like debian to inform you when this is the case?". personally i don't
really use non-free, but i'd enable that option if i had the choice
and found myself wanting something out of non-free.
> 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.
that's another idea. the reason i'd prefer the original is that this
idea was originally conceived as a compromise for the folks who
are pushing for the non-free exodus. i think they'd be much less
agreeable to the idea if it were a package, especially if it were
not installed with the base system by default.
> > 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?
well the way i interpreted it, i didn't imagine it wouldn't be for
reminders. say you're looking around for an image viewer (and let's
pretend the xv package still existed), and you found xv. it might be nice
to only have to press a button to find out what the free alternatives are,
that's what i was thinking. also, such packages could be highlighted
or have an icon or something to let the user know that there exist
free alternatives.
> > apt-cache free-alternatives packagename
> >
> > while we're at it?
>
> Good idea. We should add an 'apt-cache alternatives packagename' as
> well.
yeah, that'd be cool. maybe we should file a wishlist bug? :)
--sean
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