KpackageKit: future of package managers on your desktop (PolishLinux) [LWN.net]

PolishLinux has an interview with the KPackageKit developers. "PackageKit is a system designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier. The primary design goal is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions. KPackageKit is the KDE interface for PackageKit. Today we talk with Packagekit-Qt and KpackageKit developers about new emerging possibilities in process of managing software on your desktop." (Found on KDE.News)

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KpackageKit: future of package managers on your desktop (PolishLinux)

Posted Oct 8, 2008 18:07 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Hrm. I never thought of having a standard interface to do system updates would be bad.

Lets not forget either that PackageKit is much more secure and much more managable way to perform system updates. It can eliminate the need for you to use gksudo (or equivelent) to perform system updates. Buy using the much superior method of a system daemon that you can communicate through dbus you can control access via policykit.

By avoiding using sudo/su to run GUI programs your reducing the attack profile of your system. Instead of running all of X, most of the gnome libraries, the entire GUI application as your root user, like in the case of 'sudo synaptic', you just have to worry about securing the dbus interface for the packagekitd daemon.

KpackageKit: future of package managers on your desktop (PolishLinux)

Posted Oct 8, 2008 23:56 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

why is the DBUS interface superior?

I've seen discussions on the OLPC dev mailing lists about the problems that they have with DBUS and security becouse apparently you can claim to be anything you want when you send a message via DBUS

at least with sudo you have the OS assisting you in enforcing security.

KpackageKit: future of package managers on your desktop (PolishLinux)

Posted Oct 7, 2008 23:01 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

Seeing how many big-name distros already have a GUI package management system (Launchpad, Yast2, Red Hat's/Fedora's GUI front-end to yum/up2date, etc.), I'm wondering how much this comes off as wasted effort. Sounds like a lot of duplication.

Then again, I'm one to reap the benefits of this KPackage tool I stumbled across on my Slackware 12.1 machine even though I tend to use the command-line slackpkg tool instead.

Perhaps we'll see whether KPackageKit gains momentum alongside the well-established competition. If KPackageKit's motivation is for consistency and interface standardization amongst the various distros, then more power to it.

KpackageKit: future of package managers on your desktop (PolishLinux)

Posted Oct 8, 2008 3:27 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

PackageKit is already the default in Fedora 9 and KPackageKit is likely the default for Fedora 10 in KDE as well. Other major distributions are very involved and subsequent major versions will see more adoption from them. Not wasted effort at all.