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I really don't understand what you're trying to get at, are you concerned with out of date packages? The whole point of package repositories is to avoid that pr

I really don't understand what you're trying to get at, are you concerned with out of date packages? The whole point of package repositories is to avoid that problem, although QA testing and policies can make that non-obvious to users who aren't running some sort of 'unstable' option. Some projects (Chrome I think?) release packages that actually add their own repository to the user's system so that the user can receive updates through their standard package manager. Other projects (Firefox) have a built in "check for updates", but then you end up back in the decentralized Windows/OSX update hell. That option is generally disabled by distro packagers for obvious reasons. I've seen a lot of people citing the lack of package repositories and package managers as a weakness of Windows/OS X but this is definitely the first time I've seen it the other way around.

acon 17y ago
Yes of course I'm concerned about out of date packages. For example, my Fedora machine at work only has packages for Firefox 3.5. I tried using the tarball from firefox's home page, but for whatever reason it was really unstable. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect to be able to install the latest version of such a major open source product as Firefox without hassle. I don't know what you mean by the Windows/OSX update hell. Perhaps you mean the lack of a centralized place to look for updates. Here I agree that the situation is less than ideal, but I wouldn't call it hell. I'm sure the situation can be solved without relying on a centralized repository of all software. The way Chrome does it may be the best option. Too bad it's not used by more projects. The main thing I want is a clear separation between the core platform and the applications. Then the platform vendor can focus on the platform and the application developers can focus on their applications.

acon 17y ago

Yes of course I'm concerned about out of date packages. For example, my Fedora machine at work only has packages for Firefox 3.5. I tried using the tarball from firefox's home page, but for whatever reason it was really unstable. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect to be able to install the latest version of such a major open source product as Firefox without hassle. I don't know what you mean by the Windows/OSX update hell. Perhaps you mean the lack of a centralized place to look for updates. Here I agree that the situation is less than ideal, but I wouldn't call it hell. I'm sure the situation can be solved without relying on a centralized repository of all software. The way Chrome does it may be the best option. Too bad it's not used by more projects. The main thing I want is a clear separation between the core platform and the applications. Then the platform vendor can focus on the platform and the application developers can focus on their applications.