Re: [tlug] Am I supposed to just know what I've installed?

["Jonathan Q" <jq@example.com>]

On 3/23/2007, "Dave M G" <martin@example.com> wrote:

>But, on a more general level, if I'm understanding you guys correctly,
>there is no default behavior or expectation about how a program should
>behave once installed. The responsibility is with the documentation...?

To summarize (or riff on) what other respondents have said, as a general
rule Gnome and KDE apps will normally put themselves into a menu
somewhere, but you may have to look a bit sometimes.

However, I think there is also something of a tacit expectation by
authors that if people are installing binary packages from outside of
their distro - or especially if they're building from source and
installing - that they have enough experience/knowledge to be able to
figure it out. That said, IMO an author's web site *should* pretty
clearly tell you where a binary package will install itself/how to run
it.

Yours was actually a very good question that made me stop and say "Wow,
I never really thought about that before, but..." since my usage
pattern is to install distributor's packages (which will put themselves
into a menu, at least if they are graphical apps) or to build from
source, in which case I will know or be able to easily find out the name
of the executable.

I spend the majority of my time on a Mac these days b/c it's what I have
at work, and I must say that while I don't want to give up apt-get as a
means of installing packages, there's a lot to be said for Apple's
approach to software installation and package management. For many apps,
the entire install is as simple as dragging the package icon to the
applications folder. That's it. Then you just double-click it there.

Although, I do often find myself wishing that Apple had just used X11 for
the foundation of their UI, most especially after periodically
attempting (so far without success) to build Evolution on OS X. Anyone
who's using Entourage will understand why I want to do this <g>

-Jonathan