Linux for the Masses: A Universal Package Manager

We've discussed it here many times. There exists universal package managers. There is the LSB, and a rootless Gobolinux install, which could probably be implemented with other distros.

None of these solutions is perfect.

As for naming packages, there is a lot of room for improvement. When you get down to it, though, you have to have different names for different pieces of software. There's not just Amarok, there are many other ways to play your music. The best way to help newbies is to include a few music players in the default installation and let the newbie use the one she likes.

Hope they can do it!

Yeah, if someone can actually manage to write a package manager frontend that works fully and properly across debian, gentoo, redhat, slackware, etc., etc., etc. That would be pretty sweet. It would have to be a frontend as I doubt any of them would be apt to change their base package management systems any time soon.

techiem perhaps we have all been looking at it from the wrong angle. Every distro does have a common method. configure, make, make install, perhaps a nice GUI front end for that which picks up on localised settings for configure. Dependency resolution would still be possible and the user could either use a native package manager, or let the front end handle that part too.

azerthoth: make && make install is the most universal but also the worst way. There's a reason distros use package managers over make && make install.