Re: The Gordian Knot (was Re: Negative Summary of the Split Proposal)
On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 11:08:21PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Early in this discussion, I was told that most users would not edit
> the apt configuration file by hand. That seemed plausible--it is
> true for most other system configuration files.
>
> But today or yesterday someone told me that the only way to select a
> mirror site is to edit the apt configuration file by hand. If that's
> the case, lots and lots of users are going to edit the file to do
> that.
We don't have the resources for market research or formal usability
testing, so its a judgement call. It's true that if you want a mirror
site, you need to edit the file. But my experience in watching people
set things up tells me that most people aren't going to bother editing
the file to pick a mirror. Technical users will, but the majority aren't
going to put the time into selecting a good mirror.
> What's the real situation here?
>
> If it is true that one currently needs to edit the apt configuration
> file to specify a mirror site, that could be changed technically.
>
> Could people add a "specify a mirror site" feature to apt,
> so that users won't have to edit the configuration file for this?
> It seems like a convenient feature for the users anyway.
I think the long term goal it to automate it somewhat more than that.
The idea, IIRC, is to have a user select the right country (we can even
make an educated guess on that...) and then we can automatically pick
the fastest of the hosts currently assigned to, e.g.,
http.us.debian.org. No matter what the final implementation is, the goal
is to hide the actual file locations from the user as much as possible.
(Of course, this is unix so the user can override if he wants to.)
Mike Stone
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