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Reply-To: "Elfyn McBratney" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
From: "Elfyn McBratney" <elfyn-cygwin AT exposure DOT org DOT uk>
To: "cygwin" <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
References: <20030214182615 DOT GA20996 AT redhat DOT com> <20030214205048 DOT GA62525 AT ozzmosis DOT com> <20030214215957 DOT GD11760 AT redhat DOT com> <20030214225534 DOT GA63773 AT ozzmosis DOT com>
Subject: Re: Why the rash of people bypassing setup.exe to install?
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 23:05:58 -0000
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> On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 04:59:57PM -0500, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>
> > If you are a nontechnical cygwin user, then why would you be making
> > any determination of what is harmless or not harmless?  I would think
> > that it would be the reverse -- people who really know what they're
> > doing (or think they know what they're doing) would be untarring.
>
> Then the problem may be due to nontechnical people thinking they know
> what they're doing.  ;-)
>
> > >I suspect people aren't reading the notes near the bottom of
> > >http://www.cygwin.com/download.html, or if they are, they don't believe
> > >what they read, notably the "Installing Cygwin using this method
[untar]
> > >is not recommended." bit, because there's no explanation as to why
> > >it's not recommended.
> >
> > Again, if you're nontechnical why would you draw the conclusion "They
didn't
> > tell me why, so it must be ok"?  And, even if you did come to that
conclusion,
> > wouldn't it make sense to *try* setup.exe when the download/untar
combination
> > obviously doesn't work?
>
> There may be some sort of "it worked once with package XYZ, so it should
> work with package ABC too" mentality going on.
>
> > That's a viable theory.  This could well be.  However, it doesn't
explain
> > an increase in this behavior unless cygwin has just become more popular
> > and the 1% of people who decide not to use setup.exe have just become
> > 1% of a larger number.
>
> Quite likely.
>
> > >Then there are the numerous issues with the UI of the Setup program
> > >itself which no doubt dissuade people from using it.
> >
> > I suppose so, but, again, it seems like many people *recently* are
unaware
> > of the setup program entirely.
>
> So what are these people using to extract the package contents?  AFAIK
> WinZip doesn't support bzip2, so something tells me they must've used
> Setup at least once just to install Cygwin's bzip2 package, unless they
> went to a bit of effort to find a non-Cygwin bzip2 decompressor, then
> open the .tar with WinZip.

WinRAR has this ability.

> Hmm, actually, the first hit for bzip2 on Google leads to
> http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/ where there is a non-Cygwin Win32 version
> of bzip2 just a page down, which I find is a little ironic, but probably
> little more than coincidence.  :-)


Regards,

Elfyn McBratney
elfyn AT exposure DOT org DOT uk
www.exposure.org.uk



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