News Novell to launch app store

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/06/10/novell-to-launch-app-store/1

Novell is set to launch an application store much like Apple's, with one major difference: all the software is open-source and free of charge.

 

For your average linux junkie, this will be a waste of time. For mainstream adoption of linux, this could be a good step. Something else they could do is create a centralized help desk (some sort of moderated wiki?), so people with issues wouldn't have to go trawling through 25,000,000 pagelinks from Google only to get sarcastic and half-complete answers from people with the "if you don't know I'm not going to tell you" kind of attitude.

 

How does this differ from, say, the Add/Remove programme in Ubuntu?

 

I don't see how "yet another" way of getting software on to a linux box is going to help popular adoption.

Problem is there are too many distributions and too much "hacking" required if you want to tinker.

And that is why linux is "mainly" still the preserve of web hosting, geeks, nerds, fanboys and accademics.