Bug#542095: duplicates in the archive

[Miles Bader]

Félix Arreola Rodríguez <fgatuno.123 at gmail.com> writes:
> But, ignoring the "a desktop works fine without n-m" thing, n-m makes
> more, much more easy connecting to wifi networks, espeacially for
> laptops. I suggest make Laptop task depend on n-m, in this way, n-m
> don't get installed on desktop systems, just on laptop systems.

What's wrong with Recommends: in that case?  It seems to perfectly
match the "makes life easier for <common but not universal use-case
XXX>" scenario you describe.

A hard package-dependency in a case like this, when there isn't
actually any hard functional dependency, and there are issues with the
depended-upon package, are decidedly user-unfriendly.

[Yeah, the various desktops tend to abuse hard-dependencies in a lot
of other ways, but ... in most cases this just results in bloat.  NM
is a bit worse than that.]

-Miles 

-- 
Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think.