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how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 19:51
by hudson
Just curious what percentage of the packages in the repos are "high quality". Synaptic lists out 42,452 packages. I know, of course, that there are some absolutely astounding things...large packages and small. But, I'm wondering if one was to separate the wheat from the chaff, how much wheat would there be? My guess would be 40-60% worth keeping. Or maybe 80%, I don't know.

Debian recommends the first three CDs for a basic install. And says most of what you need or could possible want would be located in the first 8 CDs, which is 60% of 13 CDs. Then, the other question is how much work would it take to curate the repos and just leave the super high quality stuff.

Thanks if anyone has any insight on this topic!

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 19:53
by Head_on_a_Stick
hudson wrote:Just curious what percentage of the packages in the repos are "high quality".
Define "high quality"

Hello again BTW :)

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 20:00
by hudson
Hi Head_on_a_Stick :D

Well, of course, "high quality" is very subjective. Something like dmenu is a nice, small tool. Python or R or Erlang are industrial strength, or the Apache project stuff. And, of course all the GNU programs and libraries.

I was watching some video online about a linux distro and they were joking about how "pornview" is in the repos and I searched and there it was. Of course, I can't judge that program because it might serve a great need for some people. The point was more that the repos are huge and uncurated.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 20:20
by stevepusser
Uncurated? The package didn't just rebuild itself for a new release. Somebody thought it was worth doing. There are quite a few jokey packages in there, such as sl and fortune, but nobody's forcing you to install them.

I did rebuilt the "hollywood" package from Ubuntu, but had to reboot to kill all the processes it started up in a terminal from the GUI. Maybe you're just supposed to run it from a terminal session.

I also noted that most of the size of the package is an mp4 of the "Mission Impossible" theme, which I really don't think is freely distributable, but maybe Ubuntu did not check.

There are also some packages that could use a little more care in porting over to Debian; just look at the description for byobu.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 20:27
by dilberts_left_nut
Don't knock pornview till you've tried it ... :D

It's a pretty reasonable image viewer.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 23:10
by Randicus
Just curious what percentage of the packages in the repos are "high quality". ... I'm wondering if one was to separate the wheat from the chaff, how much wheat would there be? ... Debian recommends the first three CDs for a basic install. And says most of what you need or could possible want would be located in the first 8 CDs, which is 60% of 13 CDs. Then, the other question is how much work would it take to curate the repos and just leave the super high quality stuff.
You seem to make a correlation between amount of use and quality. dmenu is a very useful application with minimalistic WMs, but is used by a relatively small number of people. On the other hand, Synaptic is a fairly low-quality application that is very popular. So which is the wheat and which is the chaff? Also, many of the packages in the repository are for specific and specialised purposes. They will be on CDs 4 through 30-whatever.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-07 23:39
by GarryRicketson
So which is the wheat and which is the chaff?
I like to b e able to decide for myself, which is the wheat, and which is the chaff,
rather the some one else, deciding which packages I should or shouldn't use.
Just because something is "more popular" does not make it necessarily what I need or want.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-08 02:18
by hudson
Hello everyone and thanks for the replys! Remember, I'm just asking...

Personally, I like to throw out 70% of everything and be left with only the gold, but that's just me. Totally agree about Synaptic...I can't stand the user interface. Funny about Byobu being "Ubuntu's powerful text-based window manager"

Giving it a little thought about what is "high quality", I've decided it is everything I've installed on my machine. I'd like to single out less, man, locate and tree...never gives me problems and do exactly what I want. Python I might retract...I have a few issues there.

Oh, and sorry, I shouldn't of knocked "pornview" ;-)

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-08 06:57
by Head_on_a_Stick
hudson wrote:Personally, I like to throw out 70% of everything and be left with only the gold
Wouldn't it be simpler for you to use a minimal netinstall with all the boxes unchecked in tasksel and build it up exactly how you like it?

That's what I always do...

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-08 07:44
by somebodyelse
A little while back there was a fuss over a game for nonces. Someone wanted it included in Debian and Debian rightly refused. There are limits. Hot-babe is also no longer included (if it ever was - it was in medibuntu). But beyond that, if pornview is a reasonable image viewer, why not? We aren't targeting the enterprise market.

Some of the games are incomplete/alpha or just plain bad. You can download them all with a meta-package. It will take you the rest of your natural life but give it a go some day.

As for chaff, you should see some of the stuff Fedora has. There are packages from ten years ago where the upstream maintainer no longer walks this earth but Fedora still packages. I have come to the conclusion that Fedora is this: cutting edge server stuff being developed for RHEL plus community chaff.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-08 09:18
by Randicus
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Wouldn't it be simpler for you to use a minimal netinstall with all the boxes unchecked in tasksel and build it up exactly how you like it?

That's what I always do...
netinstall is not the only way. When I was using Debian I did minimal installs with an installation disc, then used apt-get to install the few things I wanted. I like having an installation disc in case I need to install on a machine without internet access. In my opinion, netinstall is greatly over-rated.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-11 04:15
by hudson
My favorite wtf software was in the Wheezy repos...a gui config tool for Openbox or tint2. I installed and spent 5-10 minutes configuring my windows, etc. When I was happy, I pressed "save" and a box popped up that said "function not yet implemented"...!

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-11 05:14
by GarryRicketson
I pressed "save" and a box popped up that said "function not yet implemented"...!
Hahaha, :D Sorry, I know at the moment when that happened it wasn't all that funny, but I had
something similar happen with some "drawing/animation" software package, don't even remember
what it was any more, it was not the Debian repositories, but years back, with linux mint, any way,
I spent actually several hours on some drawings for a animation, a idea I had, ...and it would
have been pretty good too, but boy was I ever sad , when I went to save it, same message
"sorry , the save feature is not available",...gee whiz, you would think the author at least would
tell you that in the documentation, or a "read me first" file, after that, I kind of learned a lesson
though, if there is not good manuals, and good documentation, it is probable that the "package" will
be the same, poorly developed, and maybe incomplete.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-11 06:18
by hudson
oh my God!...what a story - much worse than mine! you would think "saving" would be a core feature :D

totally agree about documentation...I tend to check for man pages or examples in /usr/share/doc before deciding if I want to use a program...my pet peeve now is that everyone thinks it's enough to have a web page with a wiki...I want local docs...man pages, a pdf at least!

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-11 09:34
by Head_on_a_Stick
hudson wrote:I want local docs
+1

You should use OpenBSD...

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-07-11 10:31
by keithpeter
Same problem as menus in office packages. Everyone says they are too complicated and should have less features, but then everyone has a different idea of the 'essentials'.

Debian is the only distribution that I'm aware of where it is possible to download a fair chunk of the more commonly used software for offline installation. If you download DVD1,2 and 3, you can install a pretty rich desktop experience from DVD1 and then install a huge range of software away from an Internet connection by 'registering' DVD2 and 3. When each point update to the installer set is released (e.g. the recent 8.1 isos) you can download or copy an update DVD that will update your offline installation.

I sincerely hope that tradition continues!

@hudson: the 'feature not implemented yet' error in the openbox config application you mentioned sounds like it should really be a bug report. Expected behaviour could be 'warning to user about not being able to save'.

Re: how much chaff in the repositories?

Posted: 2015-09-21 06:13
by fogpipe
i just installed a bunch of stuff that im sure many would consider chaff i think. I new to debian and i have never see such a complete trove of gkrellm plugins :) i love gkrellm been using it for years, if thats the only payoff for using debian, im in :)