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> I big fat "update the system" (or don't) button with my user-installed packages totally separate, as I get with macOS, is nicer. Today we live in the land of

> I big fat "update the system" (or don't) button with my user-installed packages totally separate, as I get with macOS, is nicer. Today we live in the land of plenty. Computer hardware is so cheap, it's practical to put together a respectable lab with gear literally pulled out of a dumpster. The reason Windows and Mac OSes have a sharper line between system software and user software is because modern advances have made computer cheap enough that not only does almost everyone have their own personal computer, almost everybody has more than one. As a result, Windows and Mac have always been mostly single-user systems. Yes, yes, they support having multiple _accounts_ but usually by one person at a time, which limits the number of accounts (as a practical matter) to a handful at best. All of the major Linux distributions were designed in a time where large multi-user systems were the norm. Disk space was limited, memory was small, CPU cycles were few. Unix (and hence Linux) was designed to make efficient use of these limited resources by installing popular software system-wide with shared dynamically-linked libraries because that was the only way to even _fit_ a few hundred users on one system. As a sysadmin, I get cold sweats thinking about what would have happened if every user wanted their own personal copy of Emacs on such a system. > Especially on a single-user system, I should be able to install most software without escalating privileges. I do believe you can, see Snaps and Flatpak. These run on just about everything. But there is a steep price: user-isolated applications can take an order of magnitude more disk space and significantly more memory compared to OS-built packages, see https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/gia8s1/flatpak_packages_significantly_larger_than_deb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/gia8s1/flatpak_pack... If you're looking for a Linux distro that behaves more like Windows and Mac, you're in luck because Ubuntu is hurtling themselves in that direction as quickly as they can by making snaps compulsory on every desktop install. > I should be able to blanket-update my user-facing software without any risk whatsoever that a kernel update will get thrown in So, I think you have it backwards. Kernel updates generally contain important security or bug fixes and you absolutely _should_ be installing those and rebooting _well_ before even acknowledging the existence of your userland apps.

dependenttypes 6y ago
> Disk space was limited, memory was small, CPU cycles were few With that logic DOS/Windows and even Mac OS (X) should be even worse regarding that then, after all both Mac OS and DOS are older than Linux. Not to mention that servers always had better cpus/more ram compared to personal computers. > Unix (and hence Linux) Mac OS X is officially recognised as a Unix. Just one of the registrations: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm > installing popular software system-wide This is exactly what windows does. Most of the times the installers need admin privileges. > see Snaps and Flatpak Nix (which was mentioned by the person that you are replying to) is an even better solution. In fact you can run it on top of existing distros too. Also, package managers for programming languages (such as Haskell's cabal and even Python's pip I think) have Nix support now. An alternative is to use appimage which is just a single executable per software.
karatestomp 6y ago
> Unix (and hence Linux) was designed to make efficient use of these limited resources by installing popular software system-wide with shared dynamically-linked libraries because that was the only way to even _fit_ a few hundred users on one system. As a sysadmin, I get cold sweats thinking about what would have happened if every user wanted their own personal copy of Emacs on such a system. I think this is largely beside the point, and not because concerns about resource use are outdated. Linux already has the concept of user groups. Just make packages installable per-group or per-user. There, issue almost entirely mitigated. The default case for single-user systems could even be group-install, since it'd look basically the same anyway—it's multiuser systems where true per-user package management might make sense, but isolation from basic system software management makes sense in either case. > If you're looking for a Linux distro that behaves more like Windows and Mac, you're in luck because Ubuntu is hurtling themselves in that direction as quickly as they can by making snaps compulsory on every desktop install. I'm no old-timer (yet) but my first couple computers had actually-floppy floppy disks, so I remember resource constraints well and remain conscious of them to an above-average level, I think. Ubuntu these days is buggy bloatware with little extra going for it in exchange, and has been for a long time. For ~3-4 years early on they were doing a good job of curating a decent Linux desktop experience with reasonable defaults (as in "Epiphany? LOL no, our desktop metapackage will install Firefox, TYVM") but those days are long past. Snaps are so plainly godawful that it's got to be internal politics that let them get this far, and keeping them alive—but such a thing is only a tempting development target because software management on Linux is all mixed up with keeping the system bootable and fundamental hardware features working to a basic level, which is the thing I'm not happy with.

dependenttypes 6y ago

> Disk space was limited, memory was small, CPU cycles were few With that logic DOS/Windows and even Mac OS (X) should be even worse regarding that then, after all both Mac OS and DOS are older than Linux. Not to mention that servers always had better cpus/more ram compared to personal computers. > Unix (and hence Linux) Mac OS X is officially recognised as a Unix. Just one of the registrations: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3581.htm > installing popular software system-wide This is exactly what windows does. Most of the times the installers need admin privileges. > see Snaps and Flatpak Nix (which was mentioned by the person that you are replying to) is an even better solution. In fact you can run it on top of existing distros too. Also, package managers for programming languages (such as Haskell's cabal and even Python's pip I think) have Nix support now. An alternative is to use appimage which is just a single executable per software.

karatestomp 6y ago

> Unix (and hence Linux) was designed to make efficient use of these limited resources by installing popular software system-wide with shared dynamically-linked libraries because that was the only way to even _fit_ a few hundred users on one system. As a sysadmin, I get cold sweats thinking about what would have happened if every user wanted their own personal copy of Emacs on such a system. I think this is largely beside the point, and not because concerns about resource use are outdated. Linux already has the concept of user groups. Just make packages installable per-group or per-user. There, issue almost entirely mitigated. The default case for single-user systems could even be group-install, since it'd look basically the same anyway—it's multiuser systems where true per-user package management might make sense, but isolation from basic system software management makes sense in either case. > If you're looking for a Linux distro that behaves more like Windows and Mac, you're in luck because Ubuntu is hurtling themselves in that direction as quickly as they can by making snaps compulsory on every desktop install. I'm no old-timer (yet) but my first couple computers had actually-floppy floppy disks, so I remember resource constraints well and remain conscious of them to an above-average level, I think. Ubuntu these days is buggy bloatware with little extra going for it in exchange, and has been for a long time. For ~3-4 years early on they were doing a good job of curating a decent Linux desktop experience with reasonable defaults (as in "Epiphany? LOL no, our desktop metapackage will install Firefox, TYVM") but those days are long past. Snaps are so plainly godawful that it's got to be internal politics that let them get this far, and keeping them alive—but such a thing is only a tempting development target because software management on Linux is all mixed up with keeping the system bootable and fundamental hardware features working to a basic level, which is the thing I'm not happy with.