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• Launchpad entry: none yet

• Packages affected:

Summary

• Think of/Implement ways to make the repositories system easier to understand/manage for newbies (excuse the terminology).

Rationale

• Despite apt-get being the superior method of installing software (compared to windows/OSX), people still find it confusing.

Use cases

Jerome knows that if he wants to install software he can do so by clicking things in in add/remove but he doesn't understand what software sources means.

Mellisa finds it a complicated process when she wants to add a third-party repository and wonders if she can be sure it is secure.

Conner is terrified of the command line and is unaware of the graphical method to add third party repositories.

Scope

Design

There needs to be a good place where it explains what Repositories or "Software Sources" are.

A nice way to help Mellisa and Conner would be to have to ability to have a hyperlink on a page which opens a dialog helping them add the repository AND authenticate it. It should also warn them if it is not secure.

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

• Sébastien GRIPON: I suggest to create a meta-repository for third party update sources. It will contain a list of repositories with only human readable names. For example, the wine repository should be available as "Wine softwares for Ubuntu feisty". This will be more user friendly. Of course, the security issue related to a given repository must be indicated in this meta-repository. This meta-repository should be available in the "Update sources" tool in the "Third-party" tab.

  • Warbo: Expanding the current repository system to let repos specify a readable name for themselves to appear in Software Sources would be a better idea I think. There are LOADS of third party repositories out there, so giving Ubuntu a list of corresponding human-readable names would pretty much defeat the point of allowing third party things at all (just like the dapper-commercial repo did nothing to help third party companies to install software in Ubuntu, because the "third parties" were all still defined by Ubuntu). The repo URL should still be present, although much smaller, underneath the repo's chosen name in the Third Party section, otherwise there would be an ability to display "evil-ubuntu-destroying-updates.com" as "Happy Official Ubuntu Nice Faster Upgrades" without giving any real URL (and the point is to avoid having to look at sources.list)

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