Comment 2 for bug 72628

Which packages: I think most candidates are listed on the wiki page you reference (there are a small number of non-candidates because we can't distribute them of course), but starting with a smaller selection might be useful.

Examples of search terms not working when I "play an ordinary user":
- itunes (searching for something that plays the CD tracks that I ripped using iTunes, none of the results work and I had to install KDE to try some of them)
- ipod (as I played the tracks above on my iPod)
- aac (they have an .aac extension, but doesn't help either)
- mid (searching for an application to open a .mid file; seems like The GIMP is the most popular tool to do that? :-p )

But seriously, you can't keep adding keywords, as the only result would be that you get too many results (remember where best to hide a tree?). One problem is that people search for solutions, equivalences, relations (iTunes instead of the music format), ... and not for program names or descriptions. So I think the search problems are not really fixable, although it might be possible to improve them a bit.

But another problem is with more experienced people being hasty and/or lazy, and not wanting to search for all those packages every time, and those are the people who point less experienced people to 'automatix' or 'easyubuntu' (even after being told not to do that).

And actually, how do I tell someone what to install to make their Ubuntu install "usable" when there is no Ubuntu computer around?

BTW: I said "or something else"; maybe instead of a wizard, we can just add a category with those "popular needed packages" in the list box at the left and name it 'automatix' or 'easyubuntu'... ;-)

Anyway, I'm not sure yet about the best "fix" for this bug, but I'm getting more and more convinced that _requiring_ people to search (the current approach) is the wrong solution.