[gobolinux-users] Another /Programs folder

[Andy Feldman]

On 3/10/07, Viola Zoltán <violazoli at gmail.com> wrote:
> But it is "hard job" to decide, any program should be in which categorie!
> For ekzample XaoS - it is a "mathematical" program, or "graphical" or
> "games" or "other"?!

That's my main problem with the suggestion. It's too arbitrary.

>  It is me good idea maximum 2 categories:

Didn't you originally suggest having full program categorizations? :-)
Maybe I misunderstood something...

I wouldn't mind having the easy capability to maintain two or more
programs folders, like Carlo described. It would let the user choose
how they want to make the distinction. One user might use it as a
"booting" programs versus "other" programs because of partitioning
reasons (like Zoli). Others might use it as "InstallPackaged" programs
versus "programs I made the recipe for" so they remember which they
can and should submit as packages. I might use it for the programs
that I might want to navigate to in Konqueror, since going into the
current programs tree in a GUI is pretty iffy with how large it is. I
could stick all the "forgettable" programs in one folder, and use the
other one for manual navigation to configs and whatnot when I don't
feel like using the command-line. I could also see myself using it to
separate the programs I hacked into my system without a valid recipe,
so I know who to blame when something about them breaks :-) and so I
remember which ones I can't just upgrade with NewVersion.

However it's implemented, if at all, it should be transparent to
people who prefer to stick with only one /Programs folder. After all,
Carlo apparently stopped maintaining the implementation because there
was little or no interest in it. Also, GoboLinux is supposed to get
away from meaningless distinctions in the filesystem hierarchy.
Despite the realistic use cases that have been presented, it feels too
much like bin/sbin for me to request it as an "official" model of
organization to standardize on in any way. If you have a specific need
(like having a very small or slow root partition), there should be
just enough functionality there to let you do that yourself, without
other people being affected by something they don't need.

-Andy