kontorri: the comments on #maemo - and the dependency of the new application catalogue on it suggests it will work perfectly well in 99.9% of cases currently.

I fully agree with the original rant. People HERE are enthusiasts and will find a way to get apps installed and working-- the general public will give up. QUICKLY. We all know that.

Any and every improvement in app installation will only serve to improve the success of the 770 and its followers. Otherwise, without such support, we have another N-Gage on our hands.

I would agree that the whole repository thing is a bit much to wrap your head around when you just want to install one app and be done with it. However, it is definitely the way to go for the following reasons:
1. central location for all software available for the 770
2. automatic method to distribute security/functionality updates
3. shared libraries reduce the space needed ... crucial for a cramped embedded system like the 770

Where this is falling down at the moment is in reason 1. in that developers are not submitting their packages upstream to Nokia to include in their official repositories. I suspect that this is partially due to Nokia not clearly outlining a process for developers to do that simply.

Reason 2. is not completely working at the moment due to many packages just not updating properly. This is sometimes the fault of the packager, sometimes the fault of a nearly full or busy 770 just not having the resources to handle both the existing installation and the update simultaneously and sometimes the fault of a sometimes wonky application manager.

Hopefully things will get better as community standards (particularly package QA standards) fall into place and developers start gravitating together but it may take a bit of time and in the meanwhile, the end user will have to go through the ridiculously unnecessary pain of researching and enabling a dozen repositories (or Application catalogues in Nokia parlance ... another source of confusion) on their 770s. There is a wiki page listing some of the common ones here:
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationRepositories
but I think things will improve as the package universe condenses.

Thanks all for interest in this matter. I will try to apply some of the kind advise provided by you all, although some/a lot of it I am not sure I fully understand. That again is due to my general ignorance of "matters IT" and "******edityness" overall To the likes of me the "click here and it will download and intall and work without you having to worry about having istalled some obscure stuff before" really is the only realistic solution..

I'm never one to forego giving my two cents so here goes.

*insert prefix* I've been screwing around with Linux since I grabbed Slackware in the mid 90's.

*body* Since then there has been one constant; apps that are forced to install after shoving them through numerous hoops, fixes, manual configuration edits, etc. I don't know if this is a developer stereotype (it's been true with 99% of the devs I know, professionally and recreationally) but for the love of all that's holy, polish the apps! Porting something to the 770 and expecting it to be executed via the command line with 9kb of switches doesn't make the app inviting. I thought it was relatively easy to make simple interfaces? Even a bunch of check boxes that will automatically be fed to said app would make it exponentially more useful.

Indeed. When I created my Garage project, I saw a comment somewhere to the effect that uploading to one of the standard repositories would only be allowed for developers with a "proven track record" - which was (i) a little vague, and (ii) a little offputting.

It might not be that bad in practice, though. For anyone interested, the required process is documented at http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ExtrasRepository, and I'm having a go at it now.

- Neil

I just have to shoot my mouth here . I do not agree with the original rant but I know all to well where it came from. I was there almost a year ago. I actually paid someone to install Linux on a laptop of mine because I found it too hard. I was used to simply clicking on a link and the software automatically being installed. That's a Windows thing. Fortunately for me the person I hired required I do some homework. It was a painful process but in the process I have become somewhat of an enthusiast. As a side effect I am now able to install; from scratch; various flavors of Linux on various machines and have the owners very happy with the result. Don't get me wrong, I am so very far from being proficient with things Linux but I realized it takes a completely different mindset to work with Linux. That's a good thing. Just because it doesn't work the way we're used to doesn't mean we should force it too. There are so many sources of information to educate one about Linux it's hard to ignore. Use them! Linux has a learning process, same as any other OS.
For me, I prefer the repository approach to installing software with the application manager. It tells me what dependencies there are and attempts to resolve them w/o my input. Sometimes I must intervene and locate the missing file myself. Much preferable to one click install and program hangs for undeterminate reasons.

This and the /extras repository underneath it seem to be empty except for Packages and Release files, and a directory of .install files.

Are the packages that used to be there available anywhere else?

Just picked up on this thread and I too would like to give my opinion. I am an end user and have not used my 770 for anything except surfing the net. I guess that is what is intended. Anyway, I have said before that I don't want to learn Linux and find it impossible to install any other software that I occasionally see mentioned on this site. Friends ask about my 770 and I tell them it is too complicated for their use. For Christmas, my son gave me an Xbox 360 with HD DVD drive and it was a snap to use. I just think the device is a techy gizmo and isn't ready for the general public.

In my opinion, the general user should *not* have to learn the inner operations of the system just to perform mundane tasks. This goes for Linux too. Linux can be made user-friendly -- Macintosh's OS X is probably the best example of that, so really there's no excuse for having both the user-friendly GUI *and* the down-and-dirty shell world available.

For non-power users, IMHO the general world of open source can be a frustrating experience. Actually, for *me* (a power user) it can be a frustrating experience, just due to a lack of central organization, broken links, hunting for libs, etc. I know most programmers hate to document and manage their work, but that type of stuff is more important to the layman than most people think. I'm a geek, so I understand, yet I still find it amusing how many open source programs seem to place more value on their changelog than actually telling the user how the program works.

Honestly, for what Nokia built into this application (the web stuff), its pretty easy to use. For anyone but power users, it *is* an Internet appliance and nothing more. If you are not one, and some functionality you want exists in apps that only can be installed via sites like this... this device is probably not for you.