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Linux 2000: There is only One True Way of installing software: using distro packages. If you do anything else you are bad and you should feel bad. This isn't t

Linux 2000: There is only One True Way of installing software: using distro packages. If you do anything else you are bad and you should feel bad. This isn't true. People have been running `./configure && make && make install` since long before 2000 and long after 2000 as well. Also, IIRC "alien" already existed in 2000, letting you install packages packaged for other distros (e.g. installing rpm on Debian). Linux 2000: if your problem is not google-trivial, there's nothing you can do. Asking friends for assistance does not help, because they will just type your problem description into Google and read the first hit. My recollection is that in 2000 people were less prone to just do a websearch and then give up when no relevant results are returned. People would ask in IRC or mailing lists. Hell, in 2001 I had Linux on my home machine and I didn't have an internet connection at all. The only way to get things to work was to rely on friends and to figure stuff out for myself. It was also more normal to spend days or weeks on a problem and not expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter via Google or StackOverflow.

saagarjha 7y ago
> This isn't true. People have been running `./configure && make && make install` since long before 2000 and long after 2000 as well. And you can still do this on macOS too!
milankragujevic 7y ago
> It was also more normal to spend days or weeks on a problem and not expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter via Google or StackOverflow. Excuse me but that is definitely not what someone should be doing unless they don't have any actual work to do and instead can use all their time to play with Linux distro configurations. It is unacceptable to have to resort to spending days or weeks on a problem. That is an absolute show stopper for almost everyone. You can "defend" Linux with the fact that it is a open source project that is maintained and improved by people in their free time, and that is absolutely okay and acceptable. But you can't then complain why hasn't Linux taken over the desktop. Why? Because, unlike on servers where the only person responsible for it is a "guru", everyone uses a PC and expects it to work and let them use it to accomplish work or entertain themselves. If Linux cannot do that, people won't use it, no matter the [whether subjective or objective] freedom-restrictions, dark patterns, privacy violations and outright illegal activity of Microsoft, or the [subjectively?] overpriced Apple ecosystem. edit: Also, I'd like to add that I use Ubuntu exclusively at home and have a super-paranoid-level network firewall setup that blocks and monitors all traffic, and use AOSP on my phone with only blobs for GPU, SoC initialization and the magic black box that is the baseband processor. I use Ubuntu because it works for me better and more often than Windows, but I am a geek and I know things that my parents don't. Okay bad example they also use Linux that I forced on them to be able to remotely administer it. But in any case people use what works for them best. I cannot afford an update that gets stuck on Getting things ready... and risk shutting down the PC and having it do a mandatory recovery or rollback procedure. Linux breaks less often for me because I pick my hardware and software and set it up. But nobody can expect that of people and they shouldn't have to. Death by a thousand paper cuts and rough edges and all.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
Why isn't this true? Of course you can do "anything else", the claim is that you are generally advised to not do that, e.g. https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian (point 1.3)

saagarjha 7y ago

> This isn't true. People have been running `./configure && make && make install` since long before 2000 and long after 2000 as well. And you can still do this on macOS too!

milankragujevic 7y ago

> It was also more normal to spend days or weeks on a problem and not expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter via Google or StackOverflow. Excuse me but that is definitely not what someone should be doing unless they don't have any actual work to do and instead can use all their time to play with Linux distro configurations. It is unacceptable to have to resort to spending days or weeks on a problem. That is an absolute show stopper for almost everyone. You can "defend" Linux with the fact that it is a open source project that is maintained and improved by people in their free time, and that is absolutely okay and acceptable. But you can't then complain why hasn't Linux taken over the desktop. Why? Because, unlike on servers where the only person responsible for it is a "guru", everyone uses a PC and expects it to work and let them use it to accomplish work or entertain themselves. If Linux cannot do that, people won't use it, no matter the [whether subjective or objective] freedom-restrictions, dark patterns, privacy violations and outright illegal activity of Microsoft, or the [subjectively?] overpriced Apple ecosystem. edit: Also, I'd like to add that I use Ubuntu exclusively at home and have a super-paranoid-level network firewall setup that blocks and monitors all traffic, and use AOSP on my phone with only blobs for GPU, SoC initialization and the magic black box that is the baseband processor. I use Ubuntu because it works for me better and more often than Windows, but I am a geek and I know things that my parents don't. Okay bad example they also use Linux that I forced on them to be able to remotely administer it. But in any case people use what works for them best. I cannot afford an update that gets stuck on Getting things ready... and risk shutting down the PC and having it do a mandatory recovery or rollback procedure. Linux breaks less often for me because I pick my hardware and software and set it up. But nobody can expect that of people and they shouldn't have to. Death by a thousand paper cuts and rough edges and all.

diffeomorphism 7y ago

Why isn't this true? Of course you can do "anything else", the claim is that you are generally advised to not do that, e.g. https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian (point 1.3)