I was looking for the chromium browser. I was quite surprised and
disappointed that cnf told me nothing. I was quite pleased that google
told me there was a specific web page <http://en.opensuse.org/Chromium>.
And that page seemed very clear that I should click on a link to
download for 11.3, which led me to
<http://software.opensuse.org/search?q=chromium&baseproject=openSUSE%
3A11.3&exclude_debug=true> and then …
GRRR, why am I confused!!!
That page lists several alternatives. Most disqualify themselves by
being targetted at meego but two remain:
openSUSE:Factory:Contrib/openSUSE_11.3
openSUSE:11.3:Contrib/standard
So what’s the difference? And just as important, why didn’t
<http://en.opensuse.org/Chromium> tell me this was going to happen and
advise me which to choose? Or better yet, why didn’t it refer me
directly to the correct one?
I haven’t been on exactly the path that you have, but
If you go to software.opensuse.org: Search Results that excludes debug packages (that seems ok as a default), and doesn’t explicitly specify what happens to ‘home projects’ (more questionable). As, by default, the details of what is happening about debug packages and home projects are hidden, it is easy to be confused about what you are seeing. I think this is a bad default, but no one else seems to care about that. Or maybe they just don’t agree.
for my search, ‘Factory’ shows up as having version 7.0.x; I can’t believe that this is what anybody (nearly) today would want, but, back in the day, that would have had some validity, and probably needs to be there for that reason
Contrib standard has 6.0 and 15.0; 15.0 seems likely to be what most would actually want
There are two sets of ‘meego’ packages; I don’t know why there are two sets, but you don’t want either; the search would be massively improved (try searching for anything kde related, sometime) if you could exclude strings; ie -exclude meego, or :x meego, or something. Massively. (I think there may be an ‘exact string match option’; I’m always afraid that this will exclude something I really want (like ‘Firefoxn’, where n is a rapidly increasing number, when searching for ‘firefox’ or ‘Firefox’), so that doesn’t help me, but may be just what you want; if it is, I’ll try to find it for you)
You still have several packages and you have to manually look at version numbers to determine what you want. In an ideal world, there would be some buttons that you could use such as ‘just show me the most recent package’ or ‘just show me the most recent package that comes from an official repo’ or something
While the software search is really useful in some circumstances, it seems to me to have fallen short of making the ‘openSUSE experience’ more pleasurable (or, possibly, less stressful) for the ordinary user. I think something like that would have been the original objective.
I’d like to see the software search as a work in progress that could still do with detail improvements, but I think enthusiasm has run out. This is a shame, as probably all the stuff with searching databases was probably the hard bit…
Edit (re: cnf):
…and I think (try ‘man cnf’ sometime for a really inadequate man page - I may be leaping to conclusions, here) the technical description of what cnf does is search for installed packages and packages available by name in configured repos. So
It doesn’t find uninstalled software that is part of some bigger package - so, if what you want is hidden in some ‘meta-package’ it won’t be found
It doesn’t find uninstalled software that would be available, but from repos that you don’t have configured
Which makes cnf less than the all-encompassing tool than one might hope
markone wrote:
> I haven’t been on exactly the path that you have, but
>
> - If you go to ‘software.opensuse.org: Search Results’
> (http://tinyurl.com/5sbbo3q) that excludes debug packages (that seems
> ok as a default), and doesn’t explicitly specify what happens to ‘home
> projects’ (more questionable). As, by default, the details of what is
> happening about debug packages and home projects are hidden, it is
> easy to be confused about what you are seeing. I think this is a bad
> default, but no one else seems to care about that. Or maybe they just
> don’t agree.
I agree and care but see it as a lost cause. There was a thread a while ago.
> - Contrib standard has 6.0 and 15.0; 15.0 seems likely to be what
> most would actually want
Thanks for that. As somebody who knows nothing about chromium nor much
about the software search, its not obvious why there would be more than
one version, nor which of the three offered by the two repositories (6,
7 & 15) would be the right one. Nor why factory appears to be behind
standard. So it’s good to have a definite statement. I’ll try that tonight.
> the search would be massively
> improved (try searching for anything kde related, sometime) if you
> could exclude strings; ie -exclude meego, or :x meego, or something.
> Massively. (I think there may be an ‘exact string match option’; I’m
> always afraid that this will exclude something I really want (like
> ‘Firefoxn’, where n is a rapidly increasing number, when searching for
> ‘firefox’ or ‘Firefox’), so that doesn’t help me, but may be just what
> you want; if it is, I’ll try to find it for you)
> - While the software search is really useful in some circumstances,
> it seems to me to have fallen short of making the ‘openSUSE
> experience’ more pleasurable (or, possibly, less stressful) for the
> ordinary user. I think something like that would have been the
> original objective.
Well I’d be happy if they just told me the schema and let me run SQL
Or yes, any of the normal conventions for building searches in web
forms. (there must be libraries for that, no?)
Well, my definitive statement is that I have 14 installed, and that is something that I’ve had installed for some months, so I guess that 15 must be the up-to-date version, by now. BTW, I would guess that the other number (792 or 839 or whatever) looks to be build number, and doesn’t look to get reset between major versions (14 & 15, for example), so that’s another clue as to what is going on. But, I don’t really use Chromium except as a fallback option, although that might change.
For that part of the problem, I’d be happy if instead of hiding what set of selections you had set, by default, the system revealed them by default. There is the room on the screen, without making things seem cluttered.
Really, I wonder how many newbies (newbie to Linux, to SUSE, to using that web page) don’t really realise that there is something that can be useful hiding there, and go away thinking that the search page doesn’t help.
You are probably right that it is a lost cause, but that won’t stop me grumbling when the subject comes up! You never can tell when some kind of senior management change cause a re-direction of priorities and you are suddenly pushing on an open door…
Re. why there are so many options - openSUSE is a community and so different people package different programs or different versions of the same program for different purposes. Choice is often confusing but, once you have chromium installed and the Contrib repo activated, you won’t have to worry about it again. I have 15 installed via the regular updates.
So I installed chromium but was very disappointed by the experience.
The main problem is that most of the things I clicked on resulted in a
blue screen and 100% CPU usage. Some things loaded a bit of an image and
then just sat there with 100% CPU.
So I googled a bit and it seems that Linux support is pretty flaky
around WebGL. So I guess I’ll just wait another year or so and then see
what’s changed. In the meantime, long live Firefox.
I don’t have that experience - Chromium ‘just works’, more or less, for me.
My main browser is Opera, but recent releases have had some odd, severe lack of speed, effects. I think this is in some way an unpleasant interaction with squid caching, but I went through a process of trying other browsers as a fall-back,/if Opera got worse. I’m still with Opera (11.50 isn’t as bad, and nothing else handles stored bookmarks as well, at least without some add-on), but:
Firefox isn’t bad - at least, starting at 4.0, I could potentially live with it (the 3.x and earlier version got more respect than actual liking from me)
Chromium isn’t bad either; not as good at handling bookmarks, and I’m a bit concerned about what happens when you get more than 50 tabs open, but usable (for me, my installation, my usage pattern); I’m still not sure why it has had that rapid rise from zero to hero, though - that took FF 5+ years, and while its good for a ‘startup’, I don’t see that it is an order of magnitude better than what else is out there, which is what you would expect, based on its rapid rise
Konqueror - a surprisingly decent browser, that, I’m afraid is always destined to be a backup choice as a browser
Midori - after a bit of a struggle to get working, works ok; lightweight/super-minimalist, and I think I’m more of a maximalist, even though I like to deny it
In terms of add-ons, Firefox is clear winner - much better/deeper infrastruture of bits you could get to customise your FF than anything else. I always worry a bit about this approach (the browser doesn’t do it OOTB, but you can add on bits to make it happen)- I mean has anyone really tested the particular obscure combination of add-ons that you want to use, and if it does go pear-shaped, does anyone support you?
Based on this, and your problems, I’m not hurrying to upgrade to the latest version. Maybe, the next major version will tempt me…
markone wrote:
> djh-novell;2371662 Wrote:
>> So I googled a bit and it seems that Linux support is pretty flaky
>> around WebGL.
>
> Based on this, and your problems, I’m not hurrying to upgrade to the
> latest version. Maybe, the next major version will tempt me…
I think it’s probably more to do with lack of support for my hardware
than chromium per se. But if I were you, I’d certainly keep the working
version if I upgraded! (I do that with FF, one user has the opensuse
version, and other users have more recent directly downloaded versions)
WebGL has nothing to do with LInux as such - it runs inside a browser - any browser that will support it - as long as it has access to OpenGL ES 2.0. That is now supported within KDE4.7 KWin.
