[MPlayer-users] Why not make an installer?

[Attila Kinali]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 22:28:05 +0200
Martin <lagitus at mbnet.fi> wrote:

> I'm not the one who's having trouble. I just think about 50% of the people new 
> to Linux would not be able to understand the README 

Then they should learn it. Or ask a friend to help them. That's
how it works. And mind you, i have helped a lot of friends
installing mplayer, but after the basic installation i showed
them where they can find the documentation and what they
have to do if they dont understand it (you know, google
knows everything).
And i'm also a strong believer that complex things should
also have a complex interface. Not in the sense that
the usage should be overcomplicated but that nothing of
the complexity should be hiden. Otherwise we'd end up
with the same stupid and ignorant population which
currently posses windows.

> or find the different 
> codec packs with many files of the same name confusing. Ease of use is part 
> of the quality of software. There are many who don't want to spend an hour 
> figuring out the README, downloading sperate fonts, guis, codecs etc. and 
> tracking down missing dependencies that the distro has installed in an 
> unusual location. 

Then they should use the prebuild rpms or ask their distro
to package mplayer (given that they wont criple it like most
distros). But keep in mind that we wont help with problems
of such inofficial packages.

> It's not always as simple as ./configure, make, make 
> install. IMO many people don't have the knowledge or patience to go through 
> the README. Even if it's not that fun to do it would make MPlayer 
> considerably better.

If ./configure cannot detect it, then a installer will be out
of luck too. ./configure got quite intelligent over time and
i hardly see it fail. The only thing you could add is a distro
detection which could then lookup which additional package
have to be installed and where files are located. But that
would mean that you have to provide an installer for nearly
all distros.

And as i said, if you can't take the time to read the
documentation then you will have a hard time using
mplayer. Go use something else, nobody will mind it.


			Attila Kinali


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