Number of Available Packages in the Repo

[mmutoo]

Hi team Mageia! First of all, I would like to thank all the great guys in Mageia team for all their efforts. I understand that this is a free software and none of the developers owe the community a bit of code. However, from what I understood in the distros world (which I am new in), if a distro is going to grow and increase the number of its users, one of the most important factors that the developers must consider is the available packages. I used PCLOS for a while before, and I was amazed by how fast they respond to requests for new packages and updates. I am not sure, but I think the Mageia team is much larger than PCLOS team. Honestly I was expecting much faster response for the requests for new packages, and a larger diversity of them in the repos. May be there is a policy that hinders the packagers for some reason, and if it is a policy then it is understandable. All i am saying is that this highly affects the number of users (especially beginners like me). Just to have a glance of what I am saying, go to the download part of any free linux software you know, and you see the the Ubuntu version. I believe this is one of the most important reasons Ubuntu is the mostly used distro. We cannot force the software developer for a Mageia version, but since the source is available, we can make the software available in the repo, right?

[doktor5000]

Well, actually first we need to increase the number of packagers to keep as many packages maintained as possible. I prefer that over the situation
with Mandriva, where most of the time there were bugs reported, actually many of them, but because of the huge number of packages and the few maintainers
that actually cared properly for their packages, most of them just rotted.

So yes, a package can be made available in the repo, but someone has to take care of it and maintain it in the long run.
If you want to help, feel free to either look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Becoming_a_Mageia_Packager or https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team

IMHO Ubuntu is one of the most used and most widespread distros as it is backed up by a company, millions of dollars
that were and are being pumped into the project and quite some people that are being paid to work on the distro and everything around it as a fulltime job.
Also that they were sending free media all around the world via ShipIt is a key factor, and another part is the excellent quality and the amount of documentation, which was mostly contributed by the community, as far as i know. That all and more resulted in a huge community - and a lot of fanboyism

[mmutoo]

Thanks for the quick reply
I agree with all your points, but I still think that the number of packages is one of the most important factors that is keeping the user base for Ubuntu. Anyways, thanks guys for the great OS.

[wobo]

I agree with all your points, but I still think that the number of packages is one of the most important factors that is keeping the user base for Ubuntu.

Yes, it was easy for Ubuntu, starting out with some 30,000 ready to use packages (from the Debian repos). It was even easier for them because almost all of those packages could be used in Ubuntu. Despite the millions of the company and all their paid employees they have done less packaging and maintaining than some other Linux distributions, it was all there for them when they started.

So, comparing Ubuntu with other distributions is not always fair or even correct.