2009/2/28 Dan Kegel dank@kegel.com:
On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 4:31 PM, Ben Klein shacklein@gmail.com wrote:
2009/2/26 Dan Kegel dank@kegel.com:
Our currently released version is 1.0, but the appdb's browse feature acts as if that version no longer exists. This will seriously confuse newcomers who are using the 1.0.1 version (e.g. anybody who installs a fresh copy of Ubuntu!).
Someone mentioned on another thread (or possibly on IRC, I don't recall) that 1.0-series is too old to be of concern to us. We don't want test data for 1.0.x; we don't want bug reports for 1.0.x unless they're still apparent in the development version. Development has stopped on 1.0.x.
That's a fine attitude from the developer's point of view, but that means that Wine *doesn't care* about Ubuntu users who expect to be able to use Wine by doing "add/remove" in the system menu.
And I think we do care.
No more than any other distro, to be honest.
Another way around this, as Scott Ritchie pointed out, is to arrange for what's in Ubuntu to be less stale. However, there are only two ways to do that: either do a stable release more often (which is difficult, and which Alexandre doesn't seem inclined to do), or get Ubuntu to accept an unstable snapshot into their stable repository (which I think they are not inclined to do).
Maybe someone should tell them that 1.0.1 is "broken" compared to latest development release. This isn't untrue - 1.1.15 has better success with a lot of apps.
Basically, someone should tell them that Wine's "stable" branch is just a code freeze, and has nothing to do with crash-resistant stability.
Yet another way to show that we care about Ubuntu users would be to make it drop-dead simple for the average user to add the Wine repository and get the latest wine. The current download instructions are really too complicated. We need instructions that are no more complicated than
First: Click *here* to add WineHQ's repository
Then: Do Applications / 'Add / Remove', and choose Wine
The instructions were like this at one point: download this script, run it, go to Add/Remove. Again, I think it's unproductive to hide information from the users. At least with the current instructions they can see *exactly* what's going on, and they don't have to worry about manual editing or the user-unfriendly command-line ...
I'd also think the average user might be sceptical of an all-in-one script that changes the configuration of their system. "Why is this thing asking for my password? What is it doing? Can I really trust it?" etc. etc.
That would compensate for the packages in Ubuntu's repo being stale.
- Dan