appdb issue: can't search for apps platinum on 1.0.x!

[Ben Klein]

2009/2/28 Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com>:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 4:31 PM, Ben Klein <shacklein at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2009/2/26 Dan Kegel <dank at 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