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That's true, iPhone apps aren't like Debian packages at all. iPhone apps are self-contained, sandboxed, can only access data that I allow them to, and if I dele

by codeflo 16y ago

That's true, iPhone apps aren't like Debian packages at all. iPhone apps are self-contained, sandboxed, can only access data that I allow them to, and if I delete them, every trace of them is gone. A Debian package on the other hand first of all has to pull 57 other packages in order to even work, each of which splatters hundreds of files of all kinds all over my filesystem, and if I uninstall a package, I can rest assured that at least two dozen configuration files remain abandoned somewhere in /etc. I'm not sure how someone could confuse the two.

telemachos 16y ago
FUD: # remove package, its dependents _and_ purge config files aptitude purge <package-name> # purge config files from items that were removed but not purged aptitude purge ~c And, to play Devil's advocate the other way around, because Debian's tools are not sandboxed, they can inter-operate sanely. You can, you know, share things, print them, move them around. It's as if - shocking - you own your own data. Imagine that. I work pretty regularly with both Debian and OSX. They both have areas where they excel. I think you're being pretty simplistic.
- codeflo 16y ago
  Well, I want to make a few things clear here. First of all, I was being a bit snarky obviously. I didn't know about "aptitude purge", but it's a bit ironic that when googling for that, the first result is a forum post about someone with orphaned config files that aptitude purge wouldn't remove... sounds reliable. I think it's time for desktop OS makers (and that includes Apple, because OS X isn't any different from Linux or Windows in this regard at all) rethink the way software is installed and organized. In my opinion, the way you can install and try applications without consequences on iOS devices has a lot going for it. Users actually install stuff on their iPads, which they don't on their Windows computers because they're scared of unintended consequences.
  - telemachos 16y ago
    Edited to remove unhelpful rage It sounds like you don't know Debian very well. That's fine. No reason you should. I know Debian reasonably well. I can tell you that in four years of using aptitude, I have found a very small number of edge cases where it does not work sanely, efficiently and helpfully. (To clarify it's really APT + aptitude. aptitude is one possible tool to use APT.) It's not perfect; no software is. But it's quite remarkable. I believe it to be a far better packaging system than anything available for OSX, including Homebrew - which I like a lot and which gets better all the time. To respond to your follow-up, I deeply disagree about iOS representing a good future for software. The kernel already implements one filesystem - and that's a big job. Why would we want every application to have to reinvent that wheel? Worse yet, how we will we allow and help users to share data between all our little sandboxes if we go that route? I think the iOS sandboxing is a disaster and huge step backwards for software. A final question: in your original post you say if you remove an iPhone app, no trace of it is left. How would you know? My point being that the system is so locked down, there's really no basis for us to know that. For all we know, iApps leave the drive cluttered with their configuration files and preferences. Maybe you develop for Apple and can show me I'm wrong (or someone else can), but as a user there's no real way for me to know this, is there?
    - codeflo 16y ago
      (Edit: This response was written at a point when the parent post was quite a bit more unfriendly than it is now. I'll leave this here regardless, even though it's out of context now.) Was I in any way rude to you? 1. That's not what I said. 2. I admit that I don't use Debian, but internally, package managers don't differ that much. I was criticizing the model where software has to install files all over the place. I think the proper response should be "make a simpler model", not "write a complex tool that can keep track of this mess". 3. So I was wrong and Debian packages come with cleanup scripts. That's good. Am I right in assuming that those cleanup scripts are only as good as the maintainer of the package, i.e. there's nothing inherent in the design of Debian that makes this cleanup function work reliably. (Note that some config files might have been created after installation, i.e. are not part of the original package.) 4. What? 5. Have you talked to a casual computer user recently? They are afraid of installing unknown software, yes. Almost everyone I know has had malware on their PC at one point or another.
dman 16y ago
I think the original article is talking about how trivial use-cases are being sold as standalone apps in many cases, how does the packaging issues in debian relate to this ? Besides I hope you know about "apt-get purge", I am yet to see a debian package leave things behind after a purge.

by codeflo 16y ago

telemachos 16y ago

FUD: # remove package, its dependents _and_ purge config files aptitude purge <package-name> # purge config files from items that were removed but not purged aptitude purge ~c And, to play Devil's advocate the other way around, because Debian's tools are not sandboxed, they can inter-operate sanely. You can, you know, share things, print them, move them around. It's as if - shocking - you own your own data. Imagine that. I work pretty regularly with both Debian and OSX. They both have areas where they excel. I think you're being pretty simplistic.

codeflo 16y ago
Well, I want to make a few things clear here. First of all, I was being a bit snarky obviously. I didn't know about "aptitude purge", but it's a bit ironic that when googling for that, the first result is a forum post about someone with orphaned config files that aptitude purge wouldn't remove... sounds reliable. I think it's time for desktop OS makers (and that includes Apple, because OS X isn't any different from Linux or Windows in this regard at all) rethink the way software is installed and organized. In my opinion, the way you can install and try applications without consequences on iOS devices has a lot going for it. Users actually install stuff on their iPads, which they don't on their Windows computers because they're scared of unintended consequences.
- telemachos 16y ago
  Edited to remove unhelpful rage It sounds like you don't know Debian very well. That's fine. No reason you should. I know Debian reasonably well. I can tell you that in four years of using aptitude, I have found a very small number of edge cases where it does not work sanely, efficiently and helpfully. (To clarify it's really APT + aptitude. aptitude is one possible tool to use APT.) It's not perfect; no software is. But it's quite remarkable. I believe it to be a far better packaging system than anything available for OSX, including Homebrew - which I like a lot and which gets better all the time. To respond to your follow-up, I deeply disagree about iOS representing a good future for software. The kernel already implements one filesystem - and that's a big job. Why would we want every application to have to reinvent that wheel? Worse yet, how we will we allow and help users to share data between all our little sandboxes if we go that route? I think the iOS sandboxing is a disaster and huge step backwards for software. A final question: in your original post you say if you remove an iPhone app, no trace of it is left. How would you know? My point being that the system is so locked down, there's really no basis for us to know that. For all we know, iApps leave the drive cluttered with their configuration files and preferences. Maybe you develop for Apple and can show me I'm wrong (or someone else can), but as a user there's no real way for me to know this, is there?
  - codeflo 16y ago
    (Edit: This response was written at a point when the parent post was quite a bit more unfriendly than it is now. I'll leave this here regardless, even though it's out of context now.) Was I in any way rude to you? 1. That's not what I said. 2. I admit that I don't use Debian, but internally, package managers don't differ that much. I was criticizing the model where software has to install files all over the place. I think the proper response should be "make a simpler model", not "write a complex tool that can keep track of this mess". 3. So I was wrong and Debian packages come with cleanup scripts. That's good. Am I right in assuming that those cleanup scripts are only as good as the maintainer of the package, i.e. there's nothing inherent in the design of Debian that makes this cleanup function work reliably. (Note that some config files might have been created after installation, i.e. are not part of the original package.) 4. What? 5. Have you talked to a casual computer user recently? They are afraid of installing unknown software, yes. Almost everyone I know has had malware on their PC at one point or another.

dman 16y ago

I think the original article is talking about how trivial use-cases are being sold as standalone apps in many cases, how does the packaging issues in debian relate to this ? Besides I hope you know about "apt-get purge", I am yet to see a debian package leave things behind after a purge.