Join Pakanto – the software package mediator

Currently Unix-like operating systems like Linux use an elegant approach called package management in order to install, remove and manage programs on a computer. For instance you can search with it in a large pool of software like in a catalogue and install what you want with a single action.

…But:

How often did you find a buggy or just cryptic, wired or even non-existing software package description in your favourite Linux/Unix distribution? – Package descriptions like „Less is More“ or „Elinks is an improved version of Links“ might be technically correct, self-evident and funny for nerds but not for an average user.

How often did you query your package manager for a term in your native language like the word „Textverarbeitung“ (German for „word processor“) because you couldn’t remember the English technical term and got zero results back? – If you ever used Linux probably more than once.

Did you ever miss some directly clickable hyperlinks to further information sources when browsing the software catalogue of your Linux/Unix distribution? – You probably installed several times quite some software just in order to know what this software package is about at all.

If you ever asked you these questions and if you just want to start eliminating these limitations but don’t know what to begin with I have a new exiting project for you:

Pakanto – the Free Content project for creating better software package descriptions.

„Pakanto“ is a short form of the composed Esperanto word „Pakopernato“ . In Esperanto „Pako“ means package and „peranto“ mediator. So “Pakanto“ aims to become the “package mediator“.

Pakanto is a wiki. So you can edit it even without an account. So whenever you find an error or something missing there just fix it; the first steps are easy. Even if you think you can’t write that well and/or if you can code we really could need your helping hand as well. Have a look at the TODO list and pick what you like.

As of now Pakanto already provides much more possibilities current package management systems can currently deal with. Pakanto thatfor aims at being an inspiration source for the programmers of RPM, DEB, Portage et. al on new exiting stuff and thus wants to evolve into an integration hub and standardisation ground for various aspects of packaging and thus software distributions as they are defined in large parts by their package management system.

Have fun.