[linux-audio-user] Re: distorting Linuxsampler

>From: Paul Davis <paul@email-addr-hidden>
>
>this assumption that inclusion in a distro is the only way to get
>software to linux users needs careful examination.

No need to examine anything. Take a look at Windows: it does not
include a single usable software. If that is what people want,
I move to Mac.

Also, take a look at how software are downloaded from the webpages:
too much clicking, waiting, and expected user intervention. Waste
of time. If it only would be Ardour, would there be no big problem.
But we are talking about hundreds of programs, including the required
libraries. With distributions it is a matter of a single click
for thousands of programs. Summer 2002 Debian has 7 GB of source
codes in 6500 program directories.

The distributions could be better: because the documentation is
not included, I have had to download from the original site
in any case.

The sites could be better: most of the time I give up and download
the entire site and the entire sourceforge file folder, only because
downloading N files and pages would require too much user intervention.
The documentation often is not in downloadable format but distributed
over tens of pages. A couple of wgets takes 15 seconds to type and
I'm free for other projects. The latest program package is then
easily found with the find program. Note that webbrowsers cannot provide
a complete view to the site: files are hard to find and often are missed
even after hours of browsing!

Last, the distributions are valuable as historical archives. Many
software gets old but the algorithms and technology in them may
well be usable in new software. The distributions also work as
reference material when coding.

If software authors don't understand the usability of distributions
and software archives, that is ok but they never should make it
impossible for others to create the distributions and archives.

Juhana

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