[packagekit] What is PackageKit? A general package management suite?

[Filipus Klutiero]

Hi,
I never used PackageKit. I develop Debian and there is no good package 
management GUI. There was discussion about what to do to get a good package 
manager for Qt/KDE. Working on KPackageKit was discussed as a possible 
replacement for Adept, Synaptic and others.

But what needs to be clear before that is the intentions of PackageKit. Does 
PackageKit intend to be a general-purpose or universal layer above libapt's 
layer?

http://packagekit.org/pk-intro.html contains

> Use cases for PackageKit exist for the following scenarios:
>
>     * Boot time security updates
>     * Installing files automatically, e.g. openoffice-clipart
>     * Installing new features, e.g. smart-card readers
>     * Allowing unprivileged users to install software in a corporate build
>     * Opening unknown file formats
>     * Removing dependencies for files

Should I understand that PackageKit wants to address a limited number of use 
cases? PackageKit seems more focused on creating simple GUI-s than powerful 
GUI-s. Is this just an impression? Basically, could PackageKit be able to 
downgrade packages, put packages on hold, manage mixed systems and everything, 
or should PackageKit complement more powerful but distribution-specific package 
management front-ends?

There are of course limitations coming from PackageKit being in development. 
I'm not asking about the current features, but about where you want to go.