On Wed, Nov 29, 2006, Daniel Herrmann wrote: > I stumbled over OpenPKG about a week ago and thougt that it could be > very useful for my new job (managing the applications on a server for > 32 Sun Ray ultra thin clients). I am very amazed by the quality and > simplicity of OpenPKG. Installation was very straightforward and every > package I tried out built smoothly. > Until I came to KDE. There seem to be packages only for kde-base and a > few libs. These are categorized as "junk" (whats that?) and only > available in CURRENT. Adventureous as I am, I tried building kde-base. > But it seems that the CURRENT-tag really means bleeding edge, as I had > several build problems. > > So I ask you: Am I assuming correctly that OpenPKG is currently not > for deploying desktop apps? That would be a pity. I really like > OpenPKG as such, but the majority of apps I have to deploy are > desktop-centric.
Well, as our sub-title on the top-level web page says: "...the unique Unix software toolkit for reproducible server solutions". And believe me: really every word in this statement was very carefully and fully intentionally selected by us ;-) If you look at http://www.openpkg.org/product/packages/ you will see that we currently have about 1000 (server/desktop) OpenPKG packages on the one side in OpenPKG Community's CURRENT series while in the OpenPKG Enterprise E1.0-SOLID series we have about 600 (server-only). This difference in the total number of packages also underlines the important point: OpenPKG both by design, intention and the amount of packages is mainly server-centric. Well, it was born and still mostly is run in the datacenter environments and there desktop applications are obviously of no interest ;-) All desktop related packages we nevertheless have are either existing to fulfill dependencies only (e.g. "png"), are optionally X11-less "desktop" applications (e.g. "imagemagick") or are existing "just for fun" (e.g. "gimp" or the "kde" stuff) because one of the developers liked it (e.g. "gimp") or tried to package it (e.g. "kde", hence its JUNK status). But all desktop parts in OpenPKG are really not in our general focus, although we have also a rather large amount of pieces in this "desktop puzzle". We've no problem if someone wants to investigate for OpenPKG on the desktop front, but I think it is not really worth the effort as one cannot play all games equally well at the same time. OpenPKG is the ultimate solution in the area where it concentrates itself on since many years: server computing and networking. But for the desktop area others are really doing already a very good job and there is no reason for us to compete with them here. We would just loose too easily as -- similar to our well known winning margin in the server area -- their winning margin in the desktop area is already too large. Hence IMHO for OpenPKG it is still better to keep focusing on its strengths than trying to compete in too many other areas. So, from my personal point of view (but others please stand up and disagree), OpenPKG is the best available technology for Unix server computing and Internet networking and if one is an OpenPKG enthusiast one also can drive and have fun of its numerious desktop packages (I do this myself a lot), but for serious/production desktop computing one should really stick with a Unix software distribution which has a strong focus (also) on desktops (e.g. the various Linux flavors like Fedora Core, SuSE, Ubuntu, etc). BTW, just because for the desktop one usually uses a different Unix software distribution doesn't have to mean that one does not have to run OpenPKG at all there. No, no, keep in mind that OpenPKG plays very nicely together with (or especially on top of) any existing Unix flavor. I myself for instance run FreeBSD/X11/KDE as my favorite "desktops" really everywhere I am working, but beside VMWare, KDE and Firefox mostly all other software components (both desktop and server related) I'm using are from an OpenPKG instance, of course. I personally prever to take just the best of each world as there usually isn't (and perhaps never will be) a "one fits all"... PS: Your "kde" experiences really was the absolute worst case for OpenPKG: it is a "JUNK-class" and "desktop-related" package. Well, this means you usually should not even try to build the package ;-) Fortunately, from our currently 1039 packages only 19 are of this class. You just successfully picked one of those few... ;-) Nevetheless, OpenPKG hopefully still convinces you with its other non-desktop strengths... Ralf S. Engelschall [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.engelschall.com ______________________________________________________________________ The OpenPKG Project www.openpkg.org User Communication List openpkg-users@openpkg.org
