Re: Whats missing from Gnome3
On Sun, 2011-11-13 at 10:57 +0000, Richard wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:34:04 -0700
> Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
>
> > Scott Ferguson wrote:
> > > Richard wrote:
> > > > Now when I was using rpm based distros, there was an app called
> > > > alien which allowed .deb files to be loaded in an rpm system. Is
> > > > there by chance an app to allow rpms to be loaded, it can't make a
> > > > worse mess than there is already without the extension files.
> > >
> > > Um, yes. It's part of LSB and it's called *alien*. :-)
> > > You can find it in the repositories. YMWV when using it - most failure
> > > to convert from RH to Debian are easily fixed path issues.
> >
> > I have used alien and been into the guts of it and after really
> > wanting it to work I was always disappointed. It sounds like a cool
> > idea. I wanted it to work. But it just can't work perfectly because
> > packages from different systems have different policies. The tool
> > can't be smart enough to understand the policies of both systems and
> > do the right thing in a sentient way. It is the policy differences
> > that case the problems. That doesn't mean that there are some good
> > examples where it works fine though.
Using alien I got the 32-bit lightscribe driver, 32-bit SimpleLabeler
and Lacie's 32-bit 4l running on my 64-bit testing.
> > But it just always seemed that the cases I wanted to use it for were
> > typical cases but ones that through no fault of its own it could not
> > work perfectly. And not working perfectly meant that it made a sloppy
> > mess on my machine. One of the reasons I have been able to
> > successfully upgrade, upgrade, upgrade from release to release is that
> > I don't allow my machine to get messed up between releases. Because
> > of this I stopped using alien entirely. I recommend to avoid alien
> > and to always use native solutions instead.
> >
> > Instead of trying to use alien to install rpms directly perhaps you
> > might say exactly what you are wanting to accomplish and the brain
> > trust on the mailing list might have a native alternative suggestion?
Building packages with checkinstall instead of installing software by
make install works for RPM and DEB based systems.
Hence compiling FLOSS might be smarter than using RPM for Debian.
Sometimes checkinstall don't build a package, e.g. if scons is used,
anyway, usually it does what it should do, you hardly will find exotic
scons stuff and similar.
> > Bob
>
> I thought I had Bob, its the either 4 or 5 Gnome3 extensions which allow further functions
> to be added to the Gnome3 desktop.
>
> AND it definitely worth complaining about as they are in existence, the other distros using Gnome3
> have them so why not make them available in debian.
> They are :-
> gnome-shell-extension-common
> gnome-shell-extension-cpu-temp
> gnome-shell-extension-remove-accessibility-icon
> gnome-shell-extension-alternative-tab
> gnome-shell-extension-alternative-status-menu
> gnome-shell-extension-auto-move-windows
> gnome-shell-extensions-common.
>
> I don't consider it much to ask for that when the new gnome shell is added that the extensions are
> added as well.
Currently there seem to be really serious issues using GNOME 3, but
fallback mode seems to enables to use old extensions.
- Ralf
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