> I don't think you're trolling.  I think you have legitimate complaints.

Thank you. On most *BSD lists, criticising an aspect of 'life' would have lead to reactions close to calling names (this is valid on some Linux lists too).

> I use yum on the command line 99% of 
the time. 

The same should be done by everyone for most of the time, and in other distros too. However, in the initial post-install steps, when exploring "what's new" (possibly "by category"), --or-- after having added a 3rd-party repository, a GUI would be very useful to explore similar packages (functionaly or by version), or to try to eliminate conflicts in an easier way.

Unfortunately, YumEx is going from acceptable to utterly unacceptable IMHO.

> What about purit?  I know they are still working on it. 

I guess you missed my phrase with "Yesterday, I selected some 40 packages to add in Pirut"...

The latest time I used Pirut, it was a nightmare, and this is why I wrote this mail.

Pup and Pirut (as well as Yumex 1.9.x) are unacceptably slow on my Celeron/2.4 GHz -- and think that with CentOS4, yumex 1.0.2 was acceptable even on Celeron/850!

I have sent some suggestions to Max Spevack about what Pirut should have to be a useful GUI:
-- You should be able to edit (enable/disable, add/edit) repositories from within Pirut.
-- It takes ages to load the info and populate the list with all the packages! (Still better than in YumEx, yet unacceptably slow compared to Synaptic on APT systems. Maybe it's not only a C++ vs. Python issue...)
-- Pirut should display more information about packages: I can now see several packages with the exactly same version, and there is no way to tell which one is from what repository, and other detail info about a package (see YumEx or Synaptic for what you could have; not the inept non-details Pirut displays).
-- What's the use of this kind of info? http://www.beranger.org/blogo2/pirut_f7_conflict.png
At least, aptitude suggests some solutions on APT systems (even YaST suggests things). Pirut simply fails.
-- Huge buttons and blond-like interface design in Pirut is a turn-off for people using computers since ages.
-- We're in 2007 and still Pirut has no clue to *directly* use the installation media as a repo!

> So anyway, the end result is, for yum gui's, I'm open to suggestions, 

> especially suggestions that don't require alot of extra work on my part.  
> Since it sounds like you have tried several types, what is your suggestion
> to help 
the problem?


Bluntly put, there is nothing anyone can do right now! There is a need for a different frontend GUI, but this is unlikely to happen. I am not very confident that an improved Pirut will be _that_ improved!

I'll sleep over this issue, maybe I'll get some ideas. By my books, the package management system is a critical area of an OS or of a distro, and I tend to give it the second place after the overall stability.

Cheers,
R-C
________________________________________
aka Beranger http://beranger.org
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