> Whether pkg, apt, yum is not at issue. If OpenSolaris adopts any > of these models it will not win them a fraction of a percent of > Linux or Unix mindshare. OTOH, if they adopt the BSD port model it > will immediately translate into a large market share of Unix, and > eventually into a large market share of Linux admins as well.
The reason for this is choice. If you give end-user a choice they will have fewer incentives to look at other distributions. The choice seems pretty straightforward from my perspective: 1) force a binary-only distribution on customers and gain no market share. Even SRPMS do not provide the options and ease of use of port-based packages. Or 2) offer a seamless source installation option and differentiate the OS as a superior option. To the end-user or sysadmin this could be a top-level menu option (preferences, binary-only|source-only|install-time)... or, with an install-time option, could be as simple as a menu tree that pops up when you select an application to install. Top level would The menu would have two options 1) source, and 2) binary and would detail the list of dependencies and versions that would be have to be installed with the binary, and a larger list of optional dependencies that could be installed with the source version. -- Roger Marquis Roble Systems Consulting http://www.roble.com/ _______________________________________________ indiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/indiana-discuss
