3 ms·

What kind of linux desktop bullshit? Has it been getting worse?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
No, it just isn't getting better. Any time you want to do something even remotely interesting, like install software that is actually up to date and therefore not in the repo, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops. One of my other usecases involved a device with only a 16GB internal disk, so naturally I would like to install applications to an external disk so they actually fit. This is usually trivial on Windows but not possible with any package manager on Linux [0]. I still constantly run into issues with hardware, especially sound and video, that require hours of googling and manually tweaking config files to fix. Oh yeah, and half the time the results from google for any issue applied to the way things were done 5 years ago, which in typical Linux fashion means that there's an entirely new way to do it now that bears no resemblance. [0] Flatpak can do it if you setup an entirely new installation on that disk, but flatpak has its own issues. Snaps can't do it at all, and while AppImage is really great relatively few projects distribute that way.
- traverseda 6y ago
  Hmm, that's fair. I'd encourage you to try something outside of the standard redhat/ubuntu distros. Manjaro is nice and is pretty much always up to date. Also has access to the AUR, so there are packages for pretty much everything. It's a lot easier to do interesting stuff. LVM can make two disks appear like they're one, but of course if you remove any of them they both fail. Doesn't really solve the underlying "I want to install apps outside of the root partition" problem though.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > I'd encourage you to try something outside of the standard redhat/ubuntu distros. Generally speaking they have the same problems as the mainstream distros, but with the additional caveat of even less chance of googling solutions and worse or no support at all from non-oss software. > LVM can make two disks appear like they're one, but of course if you remove any of them they both fail. Doesn't really solve the underlying "I want to install apps outside of the root partition" problem though. Precisely. The very concept is just so foreign to most of the Linux community that even talking about it gets you strange looks. It is actually possible to do with some significant AUFS-fu, but its a hell of a hoop to jump through for functionality that is pretty natural in every other desktop OS that ever existed.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      I've heard GoboLinux [0] does not follow Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux ---- What you describe is like installing in $HOME. It's not unusual - python virtualenv, ruby rbenv, node_modules. This comes with trade off - either system knows where to search or one has to define per project. By FHS entire Linux tree is a project. In Windows... configuration is pain. Flatpak someday.
      - sergeykish 6y ago
        Now, as I think about it, ruby is not like FHS └── gems ├── irb-1.2.3 │ ├── exe │ │ └── irb │ └── lib │ ├── irb │ └── irb.rb └── rack-2.2.2 ├── bin │ └── rackup └── lib ├── rack └── rack.rb vs ├── bin │ ├── irb │ └── rackup └── ruby ├── irb ├── irb.rb ├── rack └── rack.rb FHS approach does not support multiple versions, gems approach requires declaring version in code or Gemfile, playing with PATH, considerable slowdown https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap
  - munchbunny 6y ago
    I think that sums up my issues with desktop Linux: any user has at least some niche requirements. For mine they are fairly doable on MacOS/Windows, but they require hours of staring at documentation and downloading/compiling source code in Linux. I still write code in a Linux environment because that's where the ecosystem is, but for my daily driver I've given up on desktop Linux. And I've found that WSL gets me a Linux based development environment side by side with Windows with less pain than dual booting. I've found that when it comes to using Linux smoothly, it's a lot easier to shoehorn myself into the happy paths than to bend my setup into my way of doing things.
- confusedreeder 6y ago
  what do you mean you wanted to install applications to an external disk? if you have a separate OS on the external drive, you could chroot in and install it. If you just want that one application to be on the other disk, you could mount it to wherever on the filesystem the program would be installed. However you probably don't wanna do that on an application by application basis. you could mount /usr/bin/ on the external drive for example. or use LVM to share disk space between the disks Flatpak, Snap, Appimage and other portable format aren't really preferable. they lead to a software ecosystem that amounts to just downloading and running executable binaries off the internet, each with their own overhead.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > what do you mean you wanted to install applications to an external disk? Kinda illustrates my point about this being a foreign concept to Linux Desktop people. It's pretty simple: I want to put an application on an external disk and run it from there. > if you have a separate OS on the external drive, you could chroot in and install it. No thanks. I'd just like to have the application stored on an external disk, and execute it on the OS I have installed. > If you just want that one application to be on the other disk, you could mount it to wherever on the filesystem the program would be installed. Not really, because Linux likes to have an application spread its files all over the hierarchy, so in reality I need to either use some form of union-mounting, and/or simlinks. Of course that is only sufficient if there are no library conflicts between what the application wants and what the system uses, in that case I need to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH and other tricks. In some cases I'll need to use a launch script that calls a different ld.so. That's a lot of hoops compared to how sane operating systems do it. > LVM to share disk space between the disks System breaks when disk is removed. No good. > Flatpak, Snap, Appimage and other portable format aren't really preferable. they lead to a software ecosystem that amounts to just downloading and running executable binaries off the internet, each with their own overhead. Which is pretty much what I want, because the alternative is dealing with the bullshit I mentioned above whenever you step outside the package manager's sandbox.
    - monocasa 6y ago

No, it just isn't getting better. Any time you want to do something even remotely interesting, like install software that is actually up to date and therefore not in the repo, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops. One of my other usecases involved a device with only a 16GB internal disk, so naturally I would like to install applications to an external disk so they actually fit. This is usually trivial on Windows but not possible with any package manager on Linux [0]. I still constantly run into issues with hardware, especially sound and video, that require hours of googling and manually tweaking config files to fix. Oh yeah, and half the time the results from google for any issue applied to the way things were done 5 years ago, which in typical Linux fashion means that there's an entirely new way to do it now that bears no resemblance. [0] Flatpak can do it if you setup an entirely new installation on that disk, but flatpak has its own issues. Snaps can't do it at all, and while AppImage is really great relatively few projects distribute that way.

traverseda 6y ago
Hmm, that's fair. I'd encourage you to try something outside of the standard redhat/ubuntu distros. Manjaro is nice and is pretty much always up to date. Also has access to the AUR, so there are packages for pretty much everything. It's a lot easier to do interesting stuff. LVM can make two disks appear like they're one, but of course if you remove any of them they both fail. Doesn't really solve the underlying "I want to install apps outside of the root partition" problem though.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > I'd encourage you to try something outside of the standard redhat/ubuntu distros. Generally speaking they have the same problems as the mainstream distros, but with the additional caveat of even less chance of googling solutions and worse or no support at all from non-oss software. > LVM can make two disks appear like they're one, but of course if you remove any of them they both fail. Doesn't really solve the underlying "I want to install apps outside of the root partition" problem though. Precisely. The very concept is just so foreign to most of the Linux community that even talking about it gets you strange looks. It is actually possible to do with some significant AUFS-fu, but its a hell of a hoop to jump through for functionality that is pretty natural in every other desktop OS that ever existed.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    I've heard GoboLinux [0] does not follow Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoboLinux ---- What you describe is like installing in $HOME. It's not unusual - python virtualenv, ruby rbenv, node_modules. This comes with trade off - either system knows where to search or one has to define per project. By FHS entire Linux tree is a project. In Windows... configuration is pain. Flatpak someday.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      Now, as I think about it, ruby is not like FHS └── gems ├── irb-1.2.3 │ ├── exe │ │ └── irb │ └── lib │ ├── irb │ └── irb.rb └── rack-2.2.2 ├── bin │ └── rackup └── lib ├── rack └── rack.rb vs ├── bin │ ├── irb │ └── rackup └── ruby ├── irb ├── irb.rb ├── rack └── rack.rb FHS approach does not support multiple versions, gems approach requires declaring version in code or Gemfile, playing with PATH, considerable slowdown https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap https://github.com/Shopify/bootsnap
- munchbunny 6y ago
  I think that sums up my issues with desktop Linux: any user has at least some niche requirements. For mine they are fairly doable on MacOS/Windows, but they require hours of staring at documentation and downloading/compiling source code in Linux. I still write code in a Linux environment because that's where the ecosystem is, but for my daily driver I've given up on desktop Linux. And I've found that WSL gets me a Linux based development environment side by side with Windows with less pain than dual booting. I've found that when it comes to using Linux smoothly, it's a lot easier to shoehorn myself into the happy paths than to bend my setup into my way of doing things.
confusedreeder 6y ago
what do you mean you wanted to install applications to an external disk? if you have a separate OS on the external drive, you could chroot in and install it. If you just want that one application to be on the other disk, you could mount it to wherever on the filesystem the program would be installed. However you probably don't wanna do that on an application by application basis. you could mount /usr/bin/ on the external drive for example. or use LVM to share disk space between the disks Flatpak, Snap, Appimage and other portable format aren't really preferable. they lead to a software ecosystem that amounts to just downloading and running executable binaries off the internet, each with their own overhead.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > what do you mean you wanted to install applications to an external disk? Kinda illustrates my point about this being a foreign concept to Linux Desktop people. It's pretty simple: I want to put an application on an external disk and run it from there. > if you have a separate OS on the external drive, you could chroot in and install it. No thanks. I'd just like to have the application stored on an external disk, and execute it on the OS I have installed. > If you just want that one application to be on the other disk, you could mount it to wherever on the filesystem the program would be installed. Not really, because Linux likes to have an application spread its files all over the hierarchy, so in reality I need to either use some form of union-mounting, and/or simlinks. Of course that is only sufficient if there are no library conflicts between what the application wants and what the system uses, in that case I need to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH and other tricks. In some cases I'll need to use a launch script that calls a different ld.so. That's a lot of hoops compared to how sane operating systems do it. > LVM to share disk space between the disks System breaks when disk is removed. No good. > Flatpak, Snap, Appimage and other portable format aren't really preferable. they lead to a software ecosystem that amounts to just downloading and running executable binaries off the internet, each with their own overhead. Which is pretty much what I want, because the alternative is dealing with the bullshit I mentioned above whenever you step outside the package manager's sandbox.
  - monocasa 6y ago