Repostories are full of garbage
 

Sorry for offending title.

Have you mentioned, that in repositories there are applications/games which are tottally useless or which are abandoned and which doesnt work?
These apliccations just take place and make false hopes. Some of them should be deleted or there isnt anyone who check the stuff if it does the job it says? Someone like moderator on forums. Or are there any rules what can and what cant go into repositories?

I am more into gaming so I tried lot of emulators on n900:
DeSmuMe: emulator for nintendo DS - doesnt work, lags, crappy resolution. And author refused to work on it. So why it is still there? This apliccation just made me happy for few minutes when I was hoping that I can play DS games on n900. ********, I cant.

Flash launcher: lags same like in browser, but launcher is good.

VCMI heores3: doesnt work until they work out the resoulution (And they said that this will most likely not happen)

VGBA: lags as hell and was abandoned,there is even better emulator which is under development

Prboom: Doom emulator, works pretty well and does the job what it says, but crappy resolution (can be fixed via xterm), you cant type numbers into menu, and some more problems. This application is not finished, and is not under development anymore. (not useless aplication, just an example how developers abandon their work)

I bet that there is a lot of more useless stuff in repositories, which was abandoned and which doesnt work. I don´t have time to try all crap like Necromantion stone wallpaper.

I dont want to start a flame with developers, I know you have put a lot of time to these things, I am not a developer or anything similiar, my coding skills are pretty much zero, I just dont like when there is something unfinished.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

You should stick with extras and OVI store only. There isn't 'crap' there. The apps are free..and you're still complaining?

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Are these in Extras? If so you should be able to use the star rating to determine whether people think they are any good.

Having the ratings and feedback info integrated in the Application Manager (or some App Manager) would be good, someone needs to do the work though.

Going back to broken apps, it should be possible for those that require fixes and have no active devs to simply be downloaded (the source), fixed and then resubmitted, assuming there's someone who's actually interested in them.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I think you are raising a very important topic, and the one that definitely requires community attention. Being an expert in software quality assurance, you should probably create your own repository for N900 software, only containing high-quality well-supported software titles hand-picked by yourself and other quality software experts. Once you do that, advertise your repository to all the N900 users eagerly awaiting such a repository.

Happy New Year and good luck in your endeavors.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

If I stick with OVI i could revert back to n70 :)
You are right that these apps are free and its not nice from me to complain. I was just used to that on n70 (I had it for 5 years) everything worked as it should, all gameboy emulars worked without lag, Doom worked as it should,...

you make me laugh, thanks :D

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

Many of the applications you quoted are still in Devel or Testing, so they HAVE to be unfinished, whether you like it or not.

About Prboom and VGBA: i managed to finish both Doom and Doom 2, many expansions of them, and a few GBA games at a pefectly playable speed. Many PC emulators can't do that, and many games will never work on a emulator without problems, so this is an amazing goal for those free and open-source applications on a tablet IMO.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

err thats a fact i forget :/

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

It is dead obvious that even programs in extras-devel should be periodically reviewed to determine whether they should still be there. Otherwise, extras-devel would be a great place to leave malware or spam or whatever.

Hopefully, it is watched from time to time. I install lots of stuff and rarely find something actually bad.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

just a thought - maybe the ones that never made it out to testing
get moved off (after some nominal interval - perhaps 12months) to a section called 'archives' ?
The coding in those should never be simply discarded because
the original author (or someone else) may come along and resume development.

Re: Repostories are full of garbage
 

I think you have hit on a good idea there. It would be really good to know which apps are currently being developed and which aren't. I don't know how much trouble it would be to keep a repository like this up to date, but it's definately a good idea.