6 ms·

> Every decent Linux distro has a package manager that covers 99% of the software you want to install I wish this were true, but plenty of experience with Linu

by hannob 7y ago

> Every decent Linux distro has a package manager that covers 99% of the software you want to install I wish this were true, but plenty of experience with Linux usage tells me that not having something packaged is a very common occurence. Though of course this can be improved: More people should actually help working on their favorite Linux distro, so more software gets packaged. And upstreams should try better to collaborate with distros, which unfortunately they rarely do.

mirimir 7y ago
Right. I love Debian, but its packages are often very stale. That's why many end up using Ubuntu. And yes, I get that package review takes time, and that Debian is arguably more secure. But that's little consolation when you're dead in the water because what's packaged is too old.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I'd go back to Debian and their stale packages if only they had scheduled releases like Ubuntu has. Imagine Debian 19.10, 20.04 and so on, with Long Time Support on the .04 releases every other year. What a bliss.
  - samueloph 7y ago
    Debian has been doing a stable release every two years since 14 years now. If you want the equivalent of a non-LTS Ubuntu release, you should use Debian Testing (besides the naming, it's pretty stable)
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      Yup, and Debian recently started committing to 5-year support cycles, so it's basically the same as Ubuntu LTS releases (can skip one, but not two releases), with the difference that Debian is released when it's ready, whereas Ubuntu is released on a schedule. Personally, I don't trust Ubuntu LTS releases until they get their first point release, and even then I'm skeptical since they're a bit more loose with package versions on stable. I do trust Debian when it first releases because they're far more rigorous in their testing, though I usually wait a week or two before doing a release upgrade just in case. I used to really like Debian testing, but I've since moved to OpenSUSE because they have a real rolling release (for my desktop) and a solid release based version (for servers). I like Debian, but testing gets a bit sketchy around release time (frozen, and then a ton of updates), and I honestly don't trust Sid aside from pulling in the odd package. I don't trust Ubuntu at all, since it has caused me far too many problems in the past.
- samueloph 7y ago
  Well, in this case people should have been using Debian Testing instead of Stable. But yeah it's often that people don't understand what's Debian stable and its trade offs compared to Testing and end up unhappy with it or switching to Ubuntu (which is ~very~ similar to Debian Testing).
  - pm7 7y ago
    Unfortunately, Debian testing doesn't get security updates.
    - rollerrrr 7y ago
      To the best of my knowledge, this is not true. Have a link?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - pm7 7y ago
        See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492080 Also, this: https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#testing > there is a minimum two-day migration delay
    - hollerith 7y ago
      Good to know. From https://wiki.debian.org/Status/Testing https://wiki.debian.org/Status/Testing, here is some more detail: >there is security support for testing, but in general it cannot be expected to be of the same quality as for stable: >Updates for testing-security usually get less testing than updates for stable-security. >Updates for embargoed issues take longer because the testing security team does not have access to embargoed information. >Testing is changing all the time which increases the likelyhood of problems with the build infrastructure. Such problems can delay security updates in testing.
    - tuldia 7y ago
- tuldia 7y ago
  Ubuntu is nothing more than the Debian "unstable" branch with Canonical branding plus non-free packages. Compare https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian and https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu and you will realize that all the freshness of Ubuntu is build on top of what is available in Debian unstable. I don't think this idea of "Debian packages are often very outdated" still applies nowadays. One can add "testing" or "backports" channels in your /etc/apt/sources.lists.d and get "upstream version" software. Even "stable" ships fresh enough software these days. In the last case you can always get the source, update it and send a nmu back to Debian. Lets not forget that that is how open source works :)
  - axaxs 7y ago
    > Ubuntu is nothing more than the Debian "unstable" branch with Canonical branding plus non-free packages. This just isn't true. Ubuntu is typically quicker to update popular packages, such as desktop environments, kernel, etc. Debian unstable, even experimental, are often months behind on Gnome, for example.
    - tuldia 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#History
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  If Ubuntu is the not stale alternative to Debian (stable), then I can't imagine how bad the situation is there. I often build software myself because Ubuntu is very often stale.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I've always preferred to use Debian stable just because it's stable. And because it's arguably got the latest security updates. But for Tor, I always use the Tor Project repository. Or for Docker. And then there's stuff that won't even build in Debian, because it's been developed specifically for Ubuntu.
    - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
      My former boss had us use Debian stable in production for this reason. He did not like apt-get related surprises.
  - bbanyc 7y ago
    Ubuntu LTS (freezes every two years) or "regular" Ubuntu (freezes every six months)? I'm wondering if the periodic freeze-the-universe model that many distros use reflects a world that doesn't really exist anymore where distros came on DVDs (or CDs, or floppies). Whatever version you had on the disc, that's the version you're going to use. I just started playing with FreeBSD in a VM, which has a frozen base system and constantly-updated packages separate from it. This works better for software you don't think of as an "OS component" but the question then becomes where you draw the line. Or maybe it's just a fundamental disconnect between consumer-facing "move fast and break things" and enterprise-level "never break anything even if it means you can't move at all" and there's no way to make software that works for both.
    - farisjarrah 7y ago
      This isn’t how Ubuntu even works. Ubuntu doesn’t just “freeze” their operating system every two years. They are constantly delivering package, security, and hardware enablement fixes. Often the stuff that lands in Ubuntu non-lts versions end up in the lts point releases. They keep a stable base of x.x versions but they definitely backport bug fixes to x.x.x versions of their software packages. For example there was a bug in sudo like 3 weeks ago, and Ubuntu immediately issued a fix within hours of the upstream project’s fix.
Shoue 7y ago
I wish more repositories took the NixOS approach of writing the build scripts (+ patches if necessary) on GitHub for easy visibility and a more familiar way to submit a new or upgraded package. Once approved the binary is built and distributed from the Nix binary cache.
- jchw 7y ago
  NixOS is awesome, but contributing to Nixpkgs is at least a little challenging. The tooling leaves a bit to be desired, and it’s really hard to keep all of the guidelines and rules in your head. It would be an excellent experience if there was extensive linting and the tools were easier to understand, imo. Certainly isn’t an easy problem. It’s still probably a lot better than contributing to say, Debian. OTOH, the PR backlog is always daunting.
shpx 7y ago
Linux distros should make tasks that are just link collecting as easy as editing Wikipedia and make contributing not require learning git, their syntax and giving out your real name or creating an account. I've seen StackOverflow questions for "how do I install X" with thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of views and no-one has tried to contribute the 10 or so lines of code in the accepted answer as a package. Something is clearly too hard or not approachable.
titanomachy 7y ago
Making Debian packages is a colossal pain in the ass, or at least it's poorly documented. I've tried to learn it twice and abandoned it for more user-friendly solutions to the problem. Some people may say I'm stupid for not figuring it out, but the standard for usability of software has improved a lot since these systems were invented. The UX needs a serious overall.
- acdha 7y ago
  It’s improved a lot but also consider how many people use FPM to generate multiple formats very easily.
- tuldia 7y ago
  I guess you are exagerating quite a bit. Creating a Debian package is actually pretty straight forward: 1. download upstream tarball. 2. execute dh_make -f <path-to-tarball> 3. debuild -us -uc -b That is it! There is no secret. dh_make does the heavy lift of generating everything you need. Your only job is to declare the dependencies (build and runtime ones) inside the "control" file, maybe change the "rules" file (it is a Makefile). There are also several helpers that goes even further and automate 99% of the process.
  - gpm 7y ago
    And how is using a package built like this any better than curl | sh from upstream? You're still trusting the upstream tarball. Now in addition you are trusting the packager.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    You should expand this to blog post size and publish the hell out of it. Few people know this as the gp alludes to.
  - eikenberry 7y ago
    > That is it! There is no secret. I've been using Debian for 20 years and have never seen this advice. I currently use custom scripts for building local packages of things. I think this comes down to Debian's weak documentation. The recommended intro guide from the wiki page [1] doesn't say this and looking through the maintainers guide I do see this [2] in there but it is buried in pages and pages of other docs. Really, someone needs to write a new basic intro that doesn't bury the lede. It should start with this then expand on what to do for various issues. Or maybe start with one of those 99% automation options. If they are even easier. As is you cannot find this information without some person telling you as you cannot find it by searching for it or reading the docs. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/Intro https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/Intro [2] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/first.en.html#non-native-dh-make https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/first.en.html...

by hannob 7y ago

mirimir 7y ago

Right. I love Debian, but its packages are often very stale. That's why many end up using Ubuntu. And yes, I get that package review takes time, and that Debian is arguably more secure. But that's little consolation when you're dead in the water because what's packaged is too old.

jacobush 7y ago
I'd go back to Debian and their stale packages if only they had scheduled releases like Ubuntu has. Imagine Debian 19.10, 20.04 and so on, with Long Time Support on the .04 releases every other year. What a bliss.
- samueloph 7y ago
  Debian has been doing a stable release every two years since 14 years now. If you want the equivalent of a non-LTS Ubuntu release, you should use Debian Testing (besides the naming, it's pretty stable)
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Yup, and Debian recently started committing to 5-year support cycles, so it's basically the same as Ubuntu LTS releases (can skip one, but not two releases), with the difference that Debian is released when it's ready, whereas Ubuntu is released on a schedule. Personally, I don't trust Ubuntu LTS releases until they get their first point release, and even then I'm skeptical since they're a bit more loose with package versions on stable. I do trust Debian when it first releases because they're far more rigorous in their testing, though I usually wait a week or two before doing a release upgrade just in case. I used to really like Debian testing, but I've since moved to OpenSUSE because they have a real rolling release (for my desktop) and a solid release based version (for servers). I like Debian, but testing gets a bit sketchy around release time (frozen, and then a ton of updates), and I honestly don't trust Sid aside from pulling in the odd package. I don't trust Ubuntu at all, since it has caused me far too many problems in the past.
samueloph 7y ago
Well, in this case people should have been using Debian Testing instead of Stable. But yeah it's often that people don't understand what's Debian stable and its trade offs compared to Testing and end up unhappy with it or switching to Ubuntu (which is ~very~ similar to Debian Testing).
- pm7 7y ago
  Unfortunately, Debian testing doesn't get security updates.
  - rollerrrr 7y ago
    To the best of my knowledge, this is not true. Have a link?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - pm7 7y ago
      See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492080 Also, this: https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#testing > there is a minimum two-day migration delay
  - hollerith 7y ago
    Good to know. From https://wiki.debian.org/Status/Testing https://wiki.debian.org/Status/Testing, here is some more detail: >there is security support for testing, but in general it cannot be expected to be of the same quality as for stable: >Updates for testing-security usually get less testing than updates for stable-security. >Updates for embargoed issues take longer because the testing security team does not have access to embargoed information. >Testing is changing all the time which increases the likelyhood of problems with the build infrastructure. Such problems can delay security updates in testing.
  - tuldia 7y ago
tuldia 7y ago
Ubuntu is nothing more than the Debian "unstable" branch with Canonical branding plus non-free packages. Compare https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian and https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu and you will realize that all the freshness of Ubuntu is build on top of what is available in Debian unstable. I don't think this idea of "Debian packages are often very outdated" still applies nowadays. One can add "testing" or "backports" channels in your /etc/apt/sources.lists.d and get "upstream version" software. Even "stable" ships fresh enough software these days. In the last case you can always get the source, update it and send a nmu back to Debian. Lets not forget that that is how open source works :)
- axaxs 7y ago
  > Ubuntu is nothing more than the Debian "unstable" branch with Canonical branding plus non-free packages. This just isn't true. Ubuntu is typically quicker to update popular packages, such as desktop environments, kernel, etc. Debian unstable, even experimental, are often months behind on Gnome, for example.
  - tuldia 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#History
TeMPOraL 7y ago
If Ubuntu is the not stale alternative to Debian (stable), then I can't imagine how bad the situation is there. I often build software myself because Ubuntu is very often stale.
- mirimir 7y ago
  I've always preferred to use Debian stable just because it's stable. And because it's arguably got the latest security updates. But for Tor, I always use the Tor Project repository. Or for Docker. And then there's stuff that won't even build in Debian, because it's been developed specifically for Ubuntu.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    My former boss had us use Debian stable in production for this reason. He did not like apt-get related surprises.
- bbanyc 7y ago
  Ubuntu LTS (freezes every two years) or "regular" Ubuntu (freezes every six months)? I'm wondering if the periodic freeze-the-universe model that many distros use reflects a world that doesn't really exist anymore where distros came on DVDs (or CDs, or floppies). Whatever version you had on the disc, that's the version you're going to use. I just started playing with FreeBSD in a VM, which has a frozen base system and constantly-updated packages separate from it. This works better for software you don't think of as an "OS component" but the question then becomes where you draw the line. Or maybe it's just a fundamental disconnect between consumer-facing "move fast and break things" and enterprise-level "never break anything even if it means you can't move at all" and there's no way to make software that works for both.
  - farisjarrah 7y ago
    This isn’t how Ubuntu even works. Ubuntu doesn’t just “freeze” their operating system every two years. They are constantly delivering package, security, and hardware enablement fixes. Often the stuff that lands in Ubuntu non-lts versions end up in the lts point releases. They keep a stable base of x.x versions but they definitely backport bug fixes to x.x.x versions of their software packages. For example there was a bug in sudo like 3 weeks ago, and Ubuntu immediately issued a fix within hours of the upstream project’s fix.

Shoue 7y ago

I wish more repositories took the NixOS approach of writing the build scripts (+ patches if necessary) on GitHub for easy visibility and a more familiar way to submit a new or upgraded package. Once approved the binary is built and distributed from the Nix binary cache.

jchw 7y ago
NixOS is awesome, but contributing to Nixpkgs is at least a little challenging. The tooling leaves a bit to be desired, and it’s really hard to keep all of the guidelines and rules in your head. It would be an excellent experience if there was extensive linting and the tools were easier to understand, imo. Certainly isn’t an easy problem. It’s still probably a lot better than contributing to say, Debian. OTOH, the PR backlog is always daunting.

shpx 7y ago

Linux distros should make tasks that are just link collecting as easy as editing Wikipedia and make contributing not require learning git, their syntax and giving out your real name or creating an account. I've seen StackOverflow questions for "how do I install X" with thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of views and no-one has tried to contribute the 10 or so lines of code in the accepted answer as a package. Something is clearly too hard or not approachable.

titanomachy 7y ago

Making Debian packages is a colossal pain in the ass, or at least it's poorly documented. I've tried to learn it twice and abandoned it for more user-friendly solutions to the problem. Some people may say I'm stupid for not figuring it out, but the standard for usability of software has improved a lot since these systems were invented. The UX needs a serious overall.

acdha 7y ago
It’s improved a lot but also consider how many people use FPM to generate multiple formats very easily.
tuldia 7y ago
I guess you are exagerating quite a bit. Creating a Debian package is actually pretty straight forward: 1. download upstream tarball. 2. execute dh_make -f <path-to-tarball> 3. debuild -us -uc -b That is it! There is no secret. dh_make does the heavy lift of generating everything you need. Your only job is to declare the dependencies (build and runtime ones) inside the "control" file, maybe change the "rules" file (it is a Makefile). There are also several helpers that goes even further and automate 99% of the process.
- gpm 7y ago
  And how is using a package built like this any better than curl | sh from upstream? You're still trusting the upstream tarball. Now in addition you are trusting the packager.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  You should expand this to blog post size and publish the hell out of it. Few people know this as the gp alludes to.
- eikenberry 7y ago
  > That is it! There is no secret. I've been using Debian for 20 years and have never seen this advice. I currently use custom scripts for building local packages of things. I think this comes down to Debian's weak documentation. The recommended intro guide from the wiki page [1] doesn't say this and looking through the maintainers guide I do see this [2] in there but it is buried in pages and pages of other docs. Really, someone needs to write a new basic intro that doesn't bury the lede. It should start with this then expand on what to do for various issues. Or maybe start with one of those 99% automation options. If they are even easier. As is you cannot find this information without some person telling you as you cannot find it by searching for it or reading the docs. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/Intro https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/Intro [2] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/first.en.html#non-native-dh-make https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/first.en.html...