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Of course someone got triggered by the presence if the word "systemd". I am surprised that it didn't take longer. But that was not my point at all. The fact is

Of course someone got triggered by the presence if the word "systemd". I am surprised that it didn't take longer. But that was not my point at all. The fact is that all attempts to fix the Linux user space have essentially failed to deliver. The additional complexity added over these years did effectively nothing to move the Linux desktop into the 21st century, let alone this decade. I was extremely hopeful around 2003 to 2005 that Linux might carve out a corner in the desktop market. Now I find myself pondering switching to Windows full time after dual booting for two decades.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
"additional complexity" is the ticket. Linux Desktop tried so hard to chase some strawman of the "average user" over the past 2 decades, while at the same time keeping their identity as a unix system, that they ended up building a nightmarish Rube Goldberg machine that is completely opaque in its operation even to a lot of the people claiming to be experts in using it. They sacrificed "simple" on the altar of "easy" and, unsurprisingly, it didn't get them anywhere. Simple is easy to work with, and easy to reason about. That means that even when you screw up, it will be pretty obvious why, and when it breaks it will be pretty obvious to fix. It also usually means it'll be pretty flexible. DOS was simple, but not easy, for instance. Windows has been trending this way too. Of course, if you ask me, the Linux community always prefered complexity anyway. Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Instead of asking why they have such complicated dependency relationships in their software, or why that causes so many problems for them, they instead wrote a package manager to handle the whole complicated mess; and that package manager was such a rousing success that no one ever wrote another one because it had so elegantly and completely solved the problem. Sigh
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  > Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Most dependency relationships are very simple. The package manager isn't there as a bandaid over complexity, it's there so I don't have to do repetitive simple downloading by hand. A system could also come with everything installed, or all packages could include their dependencies, but both of those are huge wastes of space without being much simpler.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    What you're saying is it's a walled garden, an app store. Well then it sucks because of all the problems with those, including but not limited to not being very open for developers to get into without jumping through hoops and therefor having limited application choices based on whatever the package repository maintainer decided to do or not do. All packages including their dependencies is the right way to do it (AppBundles, AppDirs, PortableApps, whatever you want to call that methodology). It's 2017, you can't tell me that sharing a 400k libsomebullshit.so between the 2 applications that use it is worth all this added complexity. Bonus: It's easy as hell for developers to deploy this way. Of course, it does require a defined and stable base system to rely on, and we know how much the Linux community loathes that concept. Still, kudos to AppImage for at least trying to do the right thing.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      Huh? Package management doesn't imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere. And nothing stops you from having each package install into a single folder, if you want clearer boundaries. Sharing a 400KB library is no big deal, but I don't want a dozen 200MB python installs, etc.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
        Package management very much does imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere... as long as they conform to your package format... and they aren't incompatible with the way your distro's repository does things... and they aren't too old... or too new... did we mention there's like, 200 distros? Yeah, totally flexible that. And since when the hell can you choose where to install packages? Unless you're talking about very niche things like GoboLinux, or stupid workaround shenanigans with chroot and/or large amounts of symlinks. It's possible this is a thing that has changed and I never noticed because nobody ever does it. However, I doubt that very much given OSS developers' love for hardcoding paths at compile time. People routinely distribute Electron Apps, which are bundled with an entire browser. Minecraft comes with the entire JRE bundled. Doom 2016, as far as I know, doesn't do anything like that but is something like 70GB anyway. 200MB is not a big deal, and for my money the complexity and limitations introduced by a package manager more than outweigh the extra space lost in the few cases where a large dependency might be used by more than one application.
- the_af 9y ago
  The package manager is mostly a win. I almost never have problems installing things on Linux. I remember lots of problems (usually driver related) for Windows, back in the day (disclaimer: last version of Windows I ever touched was Windows 7).
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    That's because Windows has a similar problem. Registry, shared libs placed in system directories, hardcoded paths, uninstallers that don't work, etc. These things don't have to work like this. The package manager solves a problem that shouldn't even be a problem in the first place.
    - the_af 9y ago
      Ok, but then we haven't found a Windows advantage. I think Windows is a pain to use [1]; everything about it seems second-rate to me. My theory is that familiarity matters a lot: now that it's been years since I last touched a Windows PC, everything seems weird, difficult and awkward about it. Someone equally unfamiliar with both Windows or a user-friendly Linux like Ubuntu wouldn't have a harder time with the latter. "These things don't have to work like this" is a fine sentiment -- and one with which I agree on principle! -- but I suspect package managers themselves started that way: "this is unnecessarily difficult, let's fix it". My bet is that with almost every solution, you'll trade one set of problems for another :) ---- [1] To be fair, I'm talking about Windows circa Windows 7. Just as I'm annoyed by people who claim "you cannot game on Linux" because they last touched a distro a decade ago and keep talking about problems from the past, so I should admit I've no idea how usable Windows is these days. Maybe it got better... just like Linux did.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
        I wasn't making an argument for Windows' advantages, though there are many. To list a few: modern display server and compositing window manager that can handle multi-gpu multi-monitor seamlessly, doesn't explode when you add or remove a display, can recover from graphics driver crashes and install and use graphics drivers without a reboot, and doesn't drop all your windows while doing so. When people say you can't game on Linux, they mean it the same way one might say you can't game on a phone: it isn't impossible, it's just that you'll have a worse experience, and there's nothing Linux offers to them to justify the extra hoops to jump through and other downsides. If you've made "gamer" part of your identity, that's probably pretty important to you. But my point was really, who gives a shit how Windows does it? Aim to be better than Windows where you can instead of trying to offer a cheap Windows knock-off. And honestly, package managers don't fix anything, they just cover it up with automation and bring a lot of limitations along. For instance, you can't install 2 different versions of the same application (unless the package repository is specifically designed so you can do that for certain applications), you can't install applications to alternate paths, and you can't move applications around. Until AppImage came along Linux had no concept of a portable application, which is usually a pretty trivial thing in Windows. But instead of saying "wait, why are we installing applications this way? can we just do that differently and eliminate the problem?" they went ahead and wrote a complicated centralized database that tracks nearly every file on the system and its relationships just to try and avoid issues that, frankly, have no reason to exist in the first place. DOS had tons of applications and not a goddamned one of them required a package manager to get installed. Sorry if this is a little ranty, it just irks me that so often OSS developers (Linux Desktop devs especially) seem to choose the most complex possible answer to any given problem.
greenhouse_gas 9y ago
That's my problem with the "Linux desktop" - you want to know what's a "Linux desktop"? Its Android. Oh wait, you want a Gnu (or more general, a POSIX) Desktop for the masses? None of the "masses" need it and they _won't_ need it. What I want is the nice niche desktop for nerds.
y4mi 9y ago
he got "triggered" because systemd simply had no impact on the linux desktop space. the rest of your points are true though. and significantly more than systemd, the coming change to wayland will alienate even more people.
watwut 9y ago
You wrote that " the fact remains that this is at least a PR disaster on all accounts." No it is not PR disaster and I dont even use systemd. Or maybe because I dont use it and I am not member of community that fought that fight I can freely say it has zero impact on linux desktop PR.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

"additional complexity" is the ticket. Linux Desktop tried so hard to chase some strawman of the "average user" over the past 2 decades, while at the same time keeping their identity as a unix system, that they ended up building a nightmarish Rube Goldberg machine that is completely opaque in its operation even to a lot of the people claiming to be experts in using it. They sacrificed "simple" on the altar of "easy" and, unsurprisingly, it didn't get them anywhere. Simple is easy to work with, and easy to reason about. That means that even when you screw up, it will be pretty obvious why, and when it breaks it will be pretty obvious to fix. It also usually means it'll be pretty flexible. DOS was simple, but not easy, for instance. Windows has been trending this way too. Of course, if you ask me, the Linux community always prefered complexity anyway. Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Instead of asking why they have such complicated dependency relationships in their software, or why that causes so many problems for them, they instead wrote a package manager to handle the whole complicated mess; and that package manager was such a rousing success that no one ever wrote another one because it had so elegantly and completely solved the problem. Sigh

Dylan16807 9y ago
> Take package managers: they only exist to manage complicated dependency relationships. Most dependency relationships are very simple. The package manager isn't there as a bandaid over complexity, it's there so I don't have to do repetitive simple downloading by hand. A system could also come with everything installed, or all packages could include their dependencies, but both of those are huge wastes of space without being much simpler.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  What you're saying is it's a walled garden, an app store. Well then it sucks because of all the problems with those, including but not limited to not being very open for developers to get into without jumping through hoops and therefor having limited application choices based on whatever the package repository maintainer decided to do or not do. All packages including their dependencies is the right way to do it (AppBundles, AppDirs, PortableApps, whatever you want to call that methodology). It's 2017, you can't tell me that sharing a 400k libsomebullshit.so between the 2 applications that use it is worth all this added complexity. Bonus: It's easy as hell for developers to deploy this way. Of course, it does require a defined and stable base system to rely on, and we know how much the Linux community loathes that concept. Still, kudos to AppImage for at least trying to do the right thing.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    Huh? Package management doesn't imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere. And nothing stops you from having each package install into a single folder, if you want clearer boundaries. Sharing a 400KB library is no big deal, but I don't want a dozen 200MB python installs, etc.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      Package management very much does imply a walled garden. You can install packages from anywhere... as long as they conform to your package format... and they aren't incompatible with the way your distro's repository does things... and they aren't too old... or too new... did we mention there's like, 200 distros? Yeah, totally flexible that. And since when the hell can you choose where to install packages? Unless you're talking about very niche things like GoboLinux, or stupid workaround shenanigans with chroot and/or large amounts of symlinks. It's possible this is a thing that has changed and I never noticed because nobody ever does it. However, I doubt that very much given OSS developers' love for hardcoding paths at compile time. People routinely distribute Electron Apps, which are bundled with an entire browser. Minecraft comes with the entire JRE bundled. Doom 2016, as far as I know, doesn't do anything like that but is something like 70GB anyway. 200MB is not a big deal, and for my money the complexity and limitations introduced by a package manager more than outweigh the extra space lost in the few cases where a large dependency might be used by more than one application.
the_af 9y ago
The package manager is mostly a win. I almost never have problems installing things on Linux. I remember lots of problems (usually driver related) for Windows, back in the day (disclaimer: last version of Windows I ever touched was Windows 7).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  That's because Windows has a similar problem. Registry, shared libs placed in system directories, hardcoded paths, uninstallers that don't work, etc. These things don't have to work like this. The package manager solves a problem that shouldn't even be a problem in the first place.
  - the_af 9y ago
    Ok, but then we haven't found a Windows advantage. I think Windows is a pain to use [1]; everything about it seems second-rate to me. My theory is that familiarity matters a lot: now that it's been years since I last touched a Windows PC, everything seems weird, difficult and awkward about it. Someone equally unfamiliar with both Windows or a user-friendly Linux like Ubuntu wouldn't have a harder time with the latter. "These things don't have to work like this" is a fine sentiment -- and one with which I agree on principle! -- but I suspect package managers themselves started that way: "this is unnecessarily difficult, let's fix it". My bet is that with almost every solution, you'll trade one set of problems for another :) ---- [1] To be fair, I'm talking about Windows circa Windows 7. Just as I'm annoyed by people who claim "you cannot game on Linux" because they last touched a distro a decade ago and keep talking about problems from the past, so I should admit I've no idea how usable Windows is these days. Maybe it got better... just like Linux did.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      I wasn't making an argument for Windows' advantages, though there are many. To list a few: modern display server and compositing window manager that can handle multi-gpu multi-monitor seamlessly, doesn't explode when you add or remove a display, can recover from graphics driver crashes and install and use graphics drivers without a reboot, and doesn't drop all your windows while doing so. When people say you can't game on Linux, they mean it the same way one might say you can't game on a phone: it isn't impossible, it's just that you'll have a worse experience, and there's nothing Linux offers to them to justify the extra hoops to jump through and other downsides. If you've made "gamer" part of your identity, that's probably pretty important to you. But my point was really, who gives a shit how Windows does it? Aim to be better than Windows where you can instead of trying to offer a cheap Windows knock-off. And honestly, package managers don't fix anything, they just cover it up with automation and bring a lot of limitations along. For instance, you can't install 2 different versions of the same application (unless the package repository is specifically designed so you can do that for certain applications), you can't install applications to alternate paths, and you can't move applications around. Until AppImage came along Linux had no concept of a portable application, which is usually a pretty trivial thing in Windows. But instead of saying "wait, why are we installing applications this way? can we just do that differently and eliminate the problem?" they went ahead and wrote a complicated centralized database that tracks nearly every file on the system and its relationships just to try and avoid issues that, frankly, have no reason to exist in the first place. DOS had tons of applications and not a goddamned one of them required a package manager to get installed. Sorry if this is a little ranty, it just irks me that so often OSS developers (Linux Desktop devs especially) seem to choose the most complex possible answer to any given problem.

greenhouse_gas 9y ago

That's my problem with the "Linux desktop" - you want to know what's a "Linux desktop"? Its Android. Oh wait, you want a Gnu (or more general, a POSIX) Desktop for the masses? None of the "masses" need it and they _won't_ need it. What I want is the nice niche desktop for nerds.

y4mi 9y ago

he got "triggered" because systemd simply had no impact on the linux desktop space. the rest of your points are true though. and significantly more than systemd, the coming change to wayland will alienate even more people.

watwut 9y ago

You wrote that " the fact remains that this is at least a PR disaster on all accounts." No it is not PR disaster and I dont even use systemd. Or maybe because I dont use it and I am not member of community that fought that fight I can freely say it has zero impact on linux desktop PR.