
Show HN: Lilite, a Linux package autoinstaller - c_moscardi
https://www.lilite.co/
======
tprata
While I understand where you're coming from, package management and install
shouldn't really be a fun thing. One of the core benefits of linux is having
every package at the distance of a command, on the same place, without needing
external sites and downloads. I can understand that for some new users this is
alien, but it is a necessary, and useful in the end, adaptation that they have
to make. And finally, since this would be dedicated to new users, since olders
one would just take the simple path of creating the shell script, NEVER TEACH
A NEW USER TO JUST curl __* | BASH. That 's a criminal sin right there

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c_moscardi
Thanks for the feedback! I wasn't particularly dedicating this to new users.
This solves a problem for me, an experienced *nix user. I'm not even sure it
/would/ solve a problem for new users (arguably ninite doesn't either) - you
need to know what packages you care about in order to have an interest in
downloading them.

This site gives me an interface to say, "oh yeah, I /do/ need VLC on this
laptop, come to think of it", rather than having to lazy-evaluate that when I
have a video downloaded and realize I don't currently have a means of playing
it.

I spend a fair bit of time doing DevOps work, and this isn't meant to be some
sort of configuration management or provisioning tool. This is for desktop /
dev users, which is, I think, quite a different use case (but an increasingly
relevant one). I have a dotfiles repo, which is to say I'm familiar with the
"document things in scripts and repos" game - but it's not clear to me that
something like a script-as-documentation is even a useful process to go
through when any given computer I set up is going to be used differently. That
laptop playing VLC is very different than the web dev box I spin up to mess
around with a new project.

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c_moscardi
Hi all, I created this site!

The motivation was basically a version of ninite[1] for Linux. So very
desktop-focused. I actually got in touch with the ninite folks, who used to
run a Linux installer [2]. They said there wasn't enough interest and package
managers are "good enough." I respectfully disagree on that point - I think
that having the ability to point-and-click for the core, most important
packages you want to install is really useful when you're spinning up a new
desktop from scratch.

I was running into this problem after basically doing ad-hoc setup for every
new machine I turned on. Sure - I could write a shell script / list of
packages and save it to my dotfiles repo, but where would the fun be in that?
:)

(Plus, package lists on every machine are different)

[1] [https://ninite.com/](https://ninite.com/) [2]
[https://ninite.com/linux](https://ninite.com/linux)

