MX Linux Forum

A few comments that will hopefully be helpful to future revisions of MX:
-It's not clear to me what the difference is between installing a package from the MX Package Installer and installing it from Synaptic. I thought that maybe it was pulling from custom repos not available through Synaptic or was pulling extra packages in that aren't dependencies. I've tried installing Gnucash and Firefox and it seems that I could have installed these identically from Synaptic. I think my confusion is at least partially due to the wording "Install additional metapackages"
-After installing from MX Package Installer, when I re-enter the app, I expect the packages I installed to be checked (indicating they are already installed), but they are not. I think from a new user perspective, they might try to reinstall something that is already installed.
-maybe an additional line or two of description in the MX Installer window would help?

Thanks for listening. Great distro!

newkansan wrote:...It's not clear to me what the difference is between installing a package from the MX Package Installer and installing it from Synaptic. I thought that maybe it was pulling from custom repos not available through Synaptic or was pulling extra packages in that aren't dependencies. I've tried installing Gnucash and Firefox and it seems that I could have installed these identically from Synaptic. ...

The main function of the MX Package Installer is to make it easier to install some of the more popular packages, but they could also be installed using Synaptic or from the command line using apt-get|aptitude|dpkg.

For the most part the MX Package Installer installs packages from the same repos that Synaptic uses. In some cases it might temporarily enable a repo if it's not currently enabled, to install a package. Examples of this would be the Firefox and Thunderbird packages where the MX Package Installer will temporarily enable the Mepis 12 CR testrepo (deb http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testrepo/ mepis12cr test) if it's not currently enabled.

newkansan wrote:...After installing from MX Package Installer, when I re-enter the app, I expect the packages I installed to be checked (indicating they are already installed), but they are not. I think from a new user perspective, they might try to reinstall something that is already installed. ...

I'm not sure about having the currently installed packages "checked" when starting MX Package Installer, but do agree it would be nice to have some type of indication that a package is currently installed {maybe have a asterisk, or add another column to the show the current install status}

The main function of the MX Package Installer is to make it easier to install some of the more popular packages, but they could also be installed using Synaptic or from the command line using apt-get|aptitude|dpkg.

Makes sense. Sort of a "Greatest Hits" software center that reduces some of the geek-factor from Synaptic. I do like the concept, but think its function could be more easily discoverable. I know it was just renamed from "metapackage-installer" to "MX Package Installer" but further refinement might be in order. Perhaps simply "Software Installer" or "Application Installer" with a description in the UI window (where it currently says "Install additional metapackages") to the effect of "We've placed installers for some of the most popular applications here. They could also be installed through Synaptic or the command-line. In some cases (like the Netflix metapackage), the installer here simplifies what would otherwise be a much more complicated process."

I'm not sure about having the currently installed packages "checked" when starting MX Package Installer, but do agree it would be nice to have some type of indication that a package is currently installed {maybe have a asterisk, or add another column to the show the current install status}

Yes, exactly. Along the same lines, might it make sense to either build an "uninstaller" or at least make it easy for the user to know what packages are in each "metapackage" so they could do a complete uninstall through Synaptic?

Thanks for your feedback!

I thought the whole idea of the MX/Meta Package Installer is to make it easier to install popular items. If you want to know if it's installed open Synaptic and use it's 'Installed Packages' and then it's Search function. (After all there's not many choices in the MX/Meta Package Installer. You really should know what you have done there.)

At any rate the use of Synaptic to find out if you installed something is pretty straightforward. There is a lot of information in the wiki on Synaptic. Enter Synaptic in the wiki search box to see what's available.

Hey, don't be picking on my little Netflix projects!

That's a bad example--in M11, M12, and MX, it should just be a case of installing "netflix-desktop" and watching the gears spin. Add pipelight for some additional functionality, and enable the test repo to get the latest version.

The Pipelight folks do maintain a PPA that they claim is compatible with Debian. They provide a separate wine-compholio, though. For some reason, the folks at playonlinux don't provide a Wine patched to work with Netflix and Netflix-desktop, though you would think a cross-distro solution like that's would be a good answer.

It's a long history, initially the meta-install package was meant for installing meta-packages (a collection of packages, for example "graphics" would install all the important picture editors, but it also had the option to install packages one by one). Sometime in the MX-14 development cycle it was decided to add all the "best of bread" packages in it and become less of a meta installer because if you selected for example Desktop Environment would install all the desktop environments in the list: KDE, XFCE, Gnome, etc which obviously is not a good idea, so it became more of a custom installer -- it also installs some packages that are not handle well by Synaptic, for example it adds the needed sources for Firefox, installs Firefox and then remove the extra sources.

At some point it was discovered that we don't have the source code although the code was open sourced, so as a challenge I decided to re-write it as a Qt application (originally it was coded in PyGTK, since I didn't have the code I didn't even know that, I assumed it was PyQt), so the program changed from meta-installer to MX Package Installer -- it's no longer used to install meta packages and it's actually another application written from scratch in a different language, I also tried to make the output nicer by not loading it in a regular terminal but displaying the output directly in the program, that reduced a bit the flexibility of the program.

Your point about displaying what programs are installed is a good one, it's however a bit of a problem to code, it would make the program slower to launch and slower to refresh - it will need to parse all the custom bm files that contain the info about the packages, extract the name of the packages for each item (it's not a one-to-one relationship, some programs need more packages installed) and then run the dpkg commands to see if the packages are installed, and then mark the items in the menu as installed... also, keep in mind that is not supposed to replace Synaptic, it was originally meant to help people get packages that were not easy to install with Synaptic, so I expect people to use Synaptic most of the times and then start the MX Package Installer only to install some one off like Firefox, Opera, or Netflix app, therefore for me it's more important that the program launches and works fast than to display all the information available like Synaptic does.

In any case, if somebody knows Qt and has free time on their hands they are free to contribute, we have the source code here: https://github.com/AdrianTM/mx-packageinstaller

Appreciate all the feedback. It was confusing for me (I'm by no means a linux guru, but I am a veteran linux desktop user of 7 years) until I did some research on my own, and even then, I had doubts until this thread cleared things up. Maybe I'm just overthinking it. I'm very used to Synaptic and command-line installs, and I just assumed the MX Package Installer was for custom packages I could not get any other way. Then I searched Synaptic for some of the apps offered in the MX Package Installer and saw them there too, which led to this thread being opened. No offense meant to all those who put their hard work into this.

No offense taken. We very much appreciate thoughtful feedback, especially where--as Adrian pointed out--the program has changed quite a bit since we first started using it. Your comments will go on the Dev list as we move forward, so thanks.

lucky9 wrote:I thought the whole idea of the MX/Meta Package Installer is to make it easier to install popular items. If you want to know if it's installed open Synaptic and use it's 'Installed Packages' and then it's Search function. (After all there's not many choices in the MX/Meta Package Installer. You really should know what you have done there.)

At any rate the use of Synaptic to find out if you installed something is pretty straightforward. There is a lot of information in the wiki on Synaptic. Enter Synaptic in the wiki search box to see what's available.

The point I was trying to make was that I thought "metapackage" meant it was installing a group of packages. For example, maybe it was pulling optional packages that normally wouldn't get installed if you installed the same package through Synaptic. If you then uninstalled the main package through Synaptic, it might then leave the optional packages on the system. Some users would consider orphaned packages "bloat". Apparently that is not happening, though. My misunderstanding...

I have a prime example of differences between Synaptic and MX Installer.

I installed 'Pipelight' from Synaptic on 3 different installations of MX and none of them worked. They all gave me an 'error' in Silverlight in the Add-Ons Tab in Firefox/IceWeasel.

I installed Pipelight on another MX installation using the instructions on the FDS Team WebPage http://pipelight.net/cms/install/instal ... ebian.html and all worked perfectly. The difference was that this method pulled in the 'wine-compholio' package from synaptic as a dependency.

I installed Pipelight on yet another MX installation using the MX Package Installer and it worked. The difference was that it pulled in the 'wine-gecko' package from synaptic as a dependency. in lieu of the 'wine-compholio' package.

So, the MX Package Installer does indeed pull in useful, and perhaps necessary, dependencies for some applications that Synaptic does not. In my case, it has made Pipelight installation a breeze. And we use Pipelight alot in my household so this is significant.