[apt] Users without internet connection can't install new software
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
APT |
New
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Undecided
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Unassigned | ||
One Hundred Papercuts |
Invalid
|
Undecided
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Unassigned |
Bug Description
(meaning a new home user, not a geek like me)
Many users, like me can't install a new package without an internet connection, so new users with no net access can't find a way to get new software.
There are ways to do it, but it need to compile or simply use a binary downloaded from the web. So, users will not get the security of use a package or software directly from the Ubuntu/Debian repos, and can **help to introduce malicious software**.
If we have a Package manager to simplify software installation/
= An Couple of Ideas =
A fix for this would be using packages.ubuntu.com in other way, and it could require package-kit :(
1) We should be able to make a report of current packages installed (maybe out of the box) and save it to a file. Use this file to know with dependencies to install, download them and package them as a super-meta-package (maybe a Ubuntu Package Installer .upi). User will have the file on the drive to download and we will read information from there, so we delete the hell-dependency that some users live downloading from packages.
I suggest use a web-based catalogue build on Titanium or maybe Adobe AIR (bad idea?).
2) A MAC and Windows apt downloader. Something like the gnome-apt-install. and download to a folder adn make a tool to install them from a specific folder from an external device.
THIS may help to users that go to a cybercafes, when almost all of them have MS Windows.
3) Sharing between users: using package kit. It has a module to share installed packages.
Right now, Ubuntu can be shared among users, but, ironically the installed packages can't.
visibility: | private → public |
This is definitely larger than a trivial usability fix. This is not a paper cut.