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First of all, you can do that already. No one stops you. So I guess what you actually want is someone to fix the problems that come with your wishes, but do not

First of all, you can do that already. No one stops you. So I guess what you actually want is someone to fix the problems that come with your wishes, but do not agree with the way the distributions try to do so. You know what? Thet really don't owe you anything. Go ahead, build the system you want. But please don't come along whining when it ends up unmaintainable, instable, or starts acting against you, like, you know, Windows does. Second, linux distribution maintainers are usually much better informed about the technical details of installing software in a stable manner than any software vendor. Sure you can get your software from the vendor. But then you should be willing to accept that it is often broken, inefficient, and insecure. Software vendors have no interest whatsoever in installing their software in a professional and sustainable way on your system, package maintainers do.

jcelerier 6y ago
> But please don't come along whining when it ends up unmaintainable, instable, or starts acting against you, like, you know, Windows does. As a die-hard linux user, this line of thinking really plays against Linux. Software distribution hasn't caused problems in windows since XP. Likewise, all mac users seem pretty happy with .app bundles. > Second, linux distribution maintainers are usually much better informed about the technical details of installing software in a stable manner than any software vendor. Sure you can get your software from the vendor. But then you should be willing to accept that it is often broken, inefficient, and insecure. Software vendors have no interest whatsoever in installing their software in a professional and sustainable way on your system, package maintainers do. Do you realise how insulting this comes across ? As a software dev, my personal experience of "professional linux distro packagers" is people literally removing random lines of code of my software until it builds - who cares if it crashes as soon as you do more than open it anyways. I'd rather not have my software packaged than have it like that. My subjective experience from the software I use is that stuff like AppImage made straight by the dev is generally much more stable and works much better than whatever chtonian hack a debian packager decided to apply.
- amoe_ 6y ago
  Software distribution in Windows and Mac comes with a lot of problems, they are simply problems that you-personally don't see as part of the class of "distribution problems". Please don't tell me you've never encountered post-install errors with Windows and Mac software. Linux packages have a higher bar to meet for integration quality, and also have a more difficult job to do because of the more-fragmented nature of the platform. > As a software dev, my personal experience of "professional linux distro packagers" is people literally removing random lines of code of my software until it builds I'm sorry this happened, but I can assure you that the vast majority of maintainers do not do anything like this.
  - fvdessen 6y ago
    One specific problem I always had in Linux but never had on other systems is installing a newer version of a software than the one that is present or supported by the official package manager. It's most of the time difficult, and sometimes impossible, which is very user hostile; I, the user, should be deciding which version of the software I want to run, not the distribution.
    - petepete 6y ago
      There are distributions that cater for the bleeding edge, there are distributions that focus on stability, there are plenty that fall somewhere between. But with any distro, you call install whatever you like wherever you want. You, the user, make that call. You, the user, should have the knowledge to tidy up if it goes wrong.
      - watermelon0 6y ago
        What if I want a stable distribution, but need latest versions of some software? Installing anything outside of distro repositories and Flatpak (& alternatives) is, in most cases, PITA. Tracking down missing dependencies, figuring out which libraries are compatible, downloading source for those libraries, because the system provided are outdated, etc. You can literally spend a whole day just building a somewhat simple application. I'm not a fan of binary blobs, like it's customary on macOS/Windows, but at least I can actually use an application in a minute or so, after downloading it. There is no fussing around, it just simply works.
auggierose 6y ago
If you think that some linux distribution maintainer knows my software better than I do, then you are high as a kite.
- choeger 6y ago
  Ok, smartass, where and how do you locate the fonts installed in a system? How do you know if the system is on battery? How do you make sure that the temporary directory your service needs is actually mounted and writable? Let me guess, it works on your system, right? If you only ever develop desktop client software for Apple and Windows Systems where there is a whole fucking company to tell you these things via an API you are really not even in the same league as a developer that tries to ship software to different Unix like systems and at least somewhat adhere to standards and technical best practices that have been developed by a community.
  - auggierose 6y ago
    It's called an API. I'd say an operating system that doesn't have that, is not much of an operating system. You don't sound like you have ever developed any kind of software. Do you really think that a missing API is fixed by some distro maintainer packaging your app properly? No.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    So your argument is that Linux is missing a massive number of standardized apis which other operating systems have had for years? That sounds like a massive gap that should be fixed and not something to just accept and shrug and have hacks to work around.
    - throwaway5752 6y ago
      It's open source, go write them, then. I'm serious. That's the whole point of this article and thread ultimately.
      - marcinzm 6y ago
mindslight 6y ago
I don't really agree with the comment you're responding to, but your comment is needlessly incendiary and not particularly useful. All software critique has an assumed element of "if the developers wish to make this better for users like me", and so remarks like "[they] don't owe you anything" should be reserved for people who lean into specific developers with demands, not people earnestly offering suggestions to make the third-party software ecosystem better.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  One of the big problems with the Linux Desktop evangelism community is that they've entangled their identity with their OS of choice, and thus interpret all criticism as a personal attack. I still maintain that for all its many technical and architectural faults, the biggest thing holding back wider Linux Desktop adoption is the Linux Desktop community itself.

jcelerier 6y ago

> But please don't come along whining when it ends up unmaintainable, instable, or starts acting against you, like, you know, Windows does. As a die-hard linux user, this line of thinking really plays against Linux. Software distribution hasn't caused problems in windows since XP. Likewise, all mac users seem pretty happy with .app bundles. > Second, linux distribution maintainers are usually much better informed about the technical details of installing software in a stable manner than any software vendor. Sure you can get your software from the vendor. But then you should be willing to accept that it is often broken, inefficient, and insecure. Software vendors have no interest whatsoever in installing their software in a professional and sustainable way on your system, package maintainers do. Do you realise how insulting this comes across ? As a software dev, my personal experience of "professional linux distro packagers" is people literally removing random lines of code of my software until it builds - who cares if it crashes as soon as you do more than open it anyways. I'd rather not have my software packaged than have it like that. My subjective experience from the software I use is that stuff like AppImage made straight by the dev is generally much more stable and works much better than whatever chtonian hack a debian packager decided to apply.

amoe_ 6y ago
Software distribution in Windows and Mac comes with a lot of problems, they are simply problems that you-personally don't see as part of the class of "distribution problems". Please don't tell me you've never encountered post-install errors with Windows and Mac software. Linux packages have a higher bar to meet for integration quality, and also have a more difficult job to do because of the more-fragmented nature of the platform. > As a software dev, my personal experience of "professional linux distro packagers" is people literally removing random lines of code of my software until it builds I'm sorry this happened, but I can assure you that the vast majority of maintainers do not do anything like this.
- fvdessen 6y ago
  One specific problem I always had in Linux but never had on other systems is installing a newer version of a software than the one that is present or supported by the official package manager. It's most of the time difficult, and sometimes impossible, which is very user hostile; I, the user, should be deciding which version of the software I want to run, not the distribution.
  - petepete 6y ago
    There are distributions that cater for the bleeding edge, there are distributions that focus on stability, there are plenty that fall somewhere between. But with any distro, you call install whatever you like wherever you want. You, the user, make that call. You, the user, should have the knowledge to tidy up if it goes wrong.
    - watermelon0 6y ago
      What if I want a stable distribution, but need latest versions of some software? Installing anything outside of distro repositories and Flatpak (& alternatives) is, in most cases, PITA. Tracking down missing dependencies, figuring out which libraries are compatible, downloading source for those libraries, because the system provided are outdated, etc. You can literally spend a whole day just building a somewhat simple application. I'm not a fan of binary blobs, like it's customary on macOS/Windows, but at least I can actually use an application in a minute or so, after downloading it. There is no fussing around, it just simply works.

auggierose 6y ago

If you think that some linux distribution maintainer knows my software better than I do, then you are high as a kite.

choeger 6y ago
Ok, smartass, where and how do you locate the fonts installed in a system? How do you know if the system is on battery? How do you make sure that the temporary directory your service needs is actually mounted and writable? Let me guess, it works on your system, right? If you only ever develop desktop client software for Apple and Windows Systems where there is a whole fucking company to tell you these things via an API you are really not even in the same league as a developer that tries to ship software to different Unix like systems and at least somewhat adhere to standards and technical best practices that have been developed by a community.
- auggierose 6y ago
  It's called an API. I'd say an operating system that doesn't have that, is not much of an operating system. You don't sound like you have ever developed any kind of software. Do you really think that a missing API is fixed by some distro maintainer packaging your app properly? No.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  So your argument is that Linux is missing a massive number of standardized apis which other operating systems have had for years? That sounds like a massive gap that should be fixed and not something to just accept and shrug and have hacks to work around.
  - throwaway5752 6y ago
    It's open source, go write them, then. I'm serious. That's the whole point of this article and thread ultimately.
    - marcinzm 6y ago

mindslight 6y ago

I don't really agree with the comment you're responding to, but your comment is needlessly incendiary and not particularly useful. All software critique has an assumed element of "if the developers wish to make this better for users like me", and so remarks like "[they] don't owe you anything" should be reserved for people who lean into specific developers with demands, not people earnestly offering suggestions to make the third-party software ecosystem better.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
One of the big problems with the Linux Desktop evangelism community is that they've entangled their identity with their OS of choice, and thus interpret all criticism as a personal attack. I still maintain that for all its many technical and architectural faults, the biggest thing holding back wider Linux Desktop adoption is the Linux Desktop community itself.