On Dec 14, 2009, at 7:43 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:

> Ken Causey wrote:
>> Part of the problem is that the potential user-base of any particular
>> repository is probably not that large.  I myself have been a Debian user
>> for a decade or more and while I used the available repository a couple
>> of times, inevitably for one reason or another I always built my own VMs
>> and used a wide range of images and as such the repository was of little
>> use to me.  While I'm sure there are some users, certainly it would be
>> useful to newcomers, the reality is that the more hardcore users find it
>> more limiting than useful.
> 
> I think that's well-understood. The target audience is probably not hard-core users but rather those where you're with a friend running Linux and want to say "just type apt-get squeak" or somesuch. But like I was saying, I know little of these matters so I'm not certain how valuable that would be. What do others think?


Typically, I don't expect 'apt-get foo' to provide the most recent version of the package.  I expect more important/popular packages to be more recent, but it's not surprising if 'apt-get obscure-app' gives me something 6 months old.  At least when I'm at my friend's place, it gets me something useful without having to configure apt use an external repository.

I gather that for people who are more serious about getting the latest versions of this-or-that, the standard practice is to configure apt to look in a non-default repository (assuming that someone like Lex has set one up).  Seems like a bit of a hassle to me, but others might like it.

Cheers,
Josh


> 
> Cheers,
>  - Andreas
>