Packagekit New Default Manager Fedora 9, Pirut Removed

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Why was Pirut replaced as the default
front end in Fedora 9 by an unfinished package like PackageKit? I
understand the current move from under the wing of Red Hat and more
into the Fedora community with Fedora releases but if these are the
types of decisions that will be made, oh my!

Does this mean the Fedora community
will start making decisions to new projects just because you have a
bias or dislike of certain portions of an older working project even
if you don’t have a working viable solution?

There is no way that PackageKit should
have been included in its current state as the default software
package handler with Pirut totally removed.

I like a lot of what I see in
PackageKit as far as being able to go to the software projects home
page with a simple click, the GUI looks nice, seeing what files will
be written out or modified and the fact that you can go click inside
of that box and save the list with a copy or paste for whatever
reasons you feel you may need are good features.

I understand it talks to all of the
back end package managers like apt, yum etc.., but the usability is
not there yet. Why place it as the default package manager for Fedora
9, a major OS release?

You have negated any good that
PackageKit does with its release while its in its beginning
development stages. PackageKit is in a position it doesn’t yet
belong and you have put up blatant obstacles to using other front-end
package mangers without uninstalling PackageKit.

The immediate usability issues I have
are:

– I have to tell it to refresh
application lists, this should be default or a more readily
identifiable option. I first went through a few sub-categories
getting a ”Query produced no results” type of error before I
started looking for an option to view software I knew should be
there.

  • I found no way to select multiple
    software packages then say install and walk away. You have to sit
    there and click one package
    Hit Install Watch it
    download and install
    select next package and repeat. I really hope I’m missing something
    here I do not have the time to install all of the packages I like to
    use one at a time after my initial install.

  • When trying to install “pirut”
    from the command line using yum I get the following message:

#yum install pirut

Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit

Existing lock /var/run/yum.pid: another
copy is running as pid 10193.

Another app is currently holding the
yum lock; waiting for it to exit…

Another app is currently holding the
yum lock; waiting for it to exit…

Another app is currently holding the
yum lock; waiting for it to exit…

Another app is currently holding the
yum lock; waiting for it to exit…

Setting up Install Process

Parsing package install arguments

Package
gnome-packagekit-0.1.12-12.20080430.fc9.x86_64 already installed and
latest version

Nothing to do

I found the updated version of
PackageKit but had some environmental/dependency issues installing
the “tar.gz” and the “rpm”. I didn’t want to deal with
updating what someone has decide to be the default package manager
for Fedora 9 when I had other things to do so in installed “Yumex”.

I did however use the install one
package at a time PackageKit to install Yumex. I then started
installing the software I want by clicking on them one at a time in
Yumex and then processing the whole lot of them instead of with
“pirut” selecting all and deselecting a few packages a several
dozen more clicks per session than using Pirut. This is still better
than installing packages one at a time (that’s so MS Windows) with
PackageKit.

Since this is installed on the system
that will be my game server and I’m playing around with it now I’m
seriously thinking about installing one of the other Linux Distros
and then moving to the Distro I choose with my web servers.

Especially disturbing is the fact that
they said that PackageKit would be an alternative and Pirut can work
side by side with PackageKit but they have removed all of the Fedora
9 Pirut files from the repositories and the lower versions of Pirut
conflict with PackageKit!

Well time to finish installing packages
with……”Yumex”!

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