On Fri, 3 Nov 2023 10:55:41 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:
But wait....we *shouldn't* be using opi? Then what does that tool even exist for? (And we wonder why users get confused - provide a tool that makes it easy to install specific things, and then say "don't use that, you'll screw your system up" isn't a great look).
It exists because someone created it and provided it because they thought it would be useful for people and as a project we are very hesitant to say no to someone without a very strong reason be it legal, technical or otherwise.
"It could cause serious harm to your system" seems to be a pretty significant reason to not include it, along with "this is an unsupported tool". On my TW system, it looks like it's from the Utilities repo, which looks to me to be an "official" repo. So why are we including unsupported tools in official repos? For that matter, I see that it is *also* in the main OSS repo. So we include stuff in the main repo that people *shouldn't* use? That seems.....odd (to put it mildly). What else do we include in the OSS repo that we should be steering users away from?
I think where I sit in the compromise on this is opi can sit in the repo because its obviously useful for certain people who know what they are doing but at the same time we shouldn't be including it in official documentation which to date we haven't as far as I know. Secondly we should be discouraging people from using it in official support channels when it comes up due to the reasons mentioned in this thread.
This is news to me. I'm sure I'm not alone - and as one of the admins in the forums, I would've expected it to be something that was super clear that we *should not* be promoting the use of. Now I wonder if there are other tools that are commonly suggested that should be discouraged?
I had similar feedback to Lubos' idea of providing a desktop file pointing to software.o.o the other week.
Which I think makes more sense, because software.o.o includes home: repos - which I always recommend against because they're essentially "playground" repos (something that I've had to explain to third parties, like System76, who pointed me at a random home: repo for builds of their utilities that could run on openSUSE). I guess my bottom line question is this: How is *anyone* supposed to know what tools are "safe" and what tools we include that they "should be discouraged from using" - and why on Earth do we include anything that people who don't know any better should be "discouraged from using" in the first place? Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits