Carl Zwanzig writes:
I suppose that I'm also rather 'old-fashioned" in that my preferred installation is from source,
When was the last time you installed a BIOS from source?<wink> At some level everybody has to trust their system from that level on down, until it proves itself buggy. I don't think choice of that level is a matter of fashion; pros will be sharpening their own tools, hobbyists go to Sears and buy them off the shelf.
And as Jon said, you can learn quite a bit about what you're installing just by installing it.
Sure. I can't blame people who don't though. As a general principle, it's all too often the case that all you gain is a knowledge of pain. I wouldn't impose installing most GNOME apps from source on my worst enemy.
In the case of Mailman, the defaults *don't* suck and the batteries *are* included, it's definitely worth the small amount of extra time spent.
I mean, how many people that install from RPMs even know that there might be a README file to read, let along to and find it?
This is something that has peeved me for a decade. Installers for commercial software usually offer you the README after installation. Why don't pkgsrc and dpkg and rpm and portage and MacPorts do that?
(Yes, I suggested that to the dselect maintainer, way back when. I guess I should do it again, now that debconf actually works---it should be possible to adapt similar techniques.)