Hi,

In a thread yesterday, I mentioned that I'm considering a tablet for my wife but I'm concerned about the difficulty of installing 3rd-party apps. She's not the hacker type and I want it to be fun for her, not work.

I was left with the impression that if it's on Maemo.org, and there is a "click to install" arrow, then all of the dependencies will be taken care of. However while browsing maemo.org, I see things like this:

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/kagu/
"install failed, requires liibbz2."

Does this mean that the "click to install" button is not a guarantee that dependencies have been included? Is there a dependency-checking mechanism on Maemo.org?

From my experience (and I just loaded up my newly installed 2007 Hacker Edition OS on my 770), 95% or more of the Install buttons work. I only ran into one problem, but others noted it and the workaround (while not fun and possibly beyond her means) wasn't too bad.

If you have experience with Linux, forgive the following... if not, read on.

There are a lot of things that don't work. There are a lot of things that require workarounds that make you think they're just sloppiness on the part of the developer. I've worked with developers and programmers (there's a difference) for about 7 yrs now and there is the type that thinks "Well, everyone must have that application repository installed, so I won't include it in the .Install file."... they can't fathom somebody not doing something just like them. You get the same thing with Windows apps, but we've come to expect a standard of headaches with Windows and accept it. Linux gets held to a much higher standard and gets a thrashing from people because of it.

That nonsensical rant done, most of the apps will work out of the box and I think as she uses the tablet more, she'll be more inclined to tinker around with it even if she's never done that before. The second people tend to see their computer's screen on the tablet via VNC for the first time they'll undoubtedly mutter 'COOL!'.

Thanks for the reply. I'm familiar enough with Linux to know that often things don't work as you'd want them to. But this seems like something that can be addressed. How hard would it be to put a dependency checker on Maemo.org? Flag the entries in which the dependencies are included in the .install file, assuming that the user has no extra repositories installed. Maybe even make a special "hassle-free" installation section for those apps.

I appreciate your opinion that she'd like to tinker with the tablet, but I'm pretty sure that what seems like a fun challenge to many people on this forum seems like a pain-in-the-*** to a lot of other people. If we can minimize the number of headaches they need to deal with when customizing their tablet, I think it would be a much more popular device.

Totally agreed, which is why I've actually been running Ubuntu now for 11 months. I work in IT, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is screw with a computer. The internet tablet's another story because it's a whole new beast to me. I've played with Slackware, Redhat/Fedora Core, Mandrake, Xandros, etc., and Ubuntu's been the only one that I actually thought "Woah. I could actually run this day to day."...

To dive back into the original question though, I think after a few minutes worth of 'how to' work, she'd be fine. About 10% of the stuff might be screwy and require your intervention but otherwise she'd be fine. Still, as I eluded to, some of the pains of moving from Windows to Linux have to be adressed, even though it's only a tablet. It's a Windows world and some stuff simply won't work on the tablet (ie websites, some proprietary media formats, etc.)...