4 ms·

> For instance, gtk and qt are not desktops. They're ui toolkits. And I never claimed that. Again, as a user the difference between gnome, cinnamon or unity is

> For instance, gtk and qt are not desktops. They're ui toolkits. And I never claimed that. Again, as a user the difference between gnome, cinnamon or unity is not all that interesting, so I simply wrote "gtk-whatever" as an umbrella term and "qt-whatever" for kde plasma and lxqt. My basic question is the following: - If I find software that is only available as a snap, I will use snap. It works on any distro. -If I find it only available as a flatpak, I will use that. It works on any distro. - If I find only an app image, I will use that. It works on any distro. - I get an installer from some big commercial software. It unpacks itself in /opt or uses a docker image or... . Again works anywhere. Why should I, as a user, care which distribution mechanism you chose if they all work anyways? Why is "fragmentation" an issue, if whichever you choose works everywhere regardless?

salawat 6y ago
As a user, you will eventually be limited by the decision that developers/maintainers decide on. Want to run your program, but I only support something for hardware that supports full client virtualization, which your system doesn't have? Oh well. Oh, you wanted to run that Snap, but the cache is invalidated or cleaned, and no internet connection? Oh well. Sucks to be you. Oh crap, you need to do that one final fix real quick in that one program, but oops! I just force pushed out a functionality breaking security update! Sorry bout it! It may not seem so important from the casual user perspective, because you may not sample different configurations or distribution channels as devs/maintainers/admins, but you'll hit it one day, and you'll be as pissy as we are. Why doesn't this shit just work? And the answer is, because it isn't magic, and it has to get to you somehow. Again, I hedge on the side of being deliverable with the simplest set of abstractions possible, and I'm old enough to remember when complex things actually came with manuals; so I prefer that delivery and understanding the ins and outs of the tool. You don't get that with FlatPak or Snap without cracking open the container which is far beyond most average computer users, and I place value on people being able to easily learn how to program, utilize, or reason about computers better, something that no container will ever teach you; especially given that in order to understand them you need to already be pretty deeply immersed in the mechanics of computing. On the other hand, a zipped workspace with some tooling, READMEs and documentation can make for hours of discovery and familiarization with system fundamentals. It's an approachability thing, and we've totally lost touch with it as a modern industry in my opinion.

salawat 6y ago

As a user, you will eventually be limited by the decision that developers/maintainers decide on. Want to run your program, but I only support something for hardware that supports full client virtualization, which your system doesn't have? Oh well. Oh, you wanted to run that Snap, but the cache is invalidated or cleaned, and no internet connection? Oh well. Sucks to be you. Oh crap, you need to do that one final fix real quick in that one program, but oops! I just force pushed out a functionality breaking security update! Sorry bout it! It may not seem so important from the casual user perspective, because you may not sample different configurations or distribution channels as devs/maintainers/admins, but you'll hit it one day, and you'll be as pissy as we are. Why doesn't this shit just work? And the answer is, because it isn't magic, and it has to get to you somehow. Again, I hedge on the side of being deliverable with the simplest set of abstractions possible, and I'm old enough to remember when complex things actually came with manuals; so I prefer that delivery and understanding the ins and outs of the tool. You don't get that with FlatPak or Snap without cracking open the container which is far beyond most average computer users, and I place value on people being able to easily learn how to program, utilize, or reason about computers better, something that no container will ever teach you; especially given that in order to understand them you need to already be pretty deeply immersed in the mechanics of computing. On the other hand, a zipped workspace with some tooling, READMEs and documentation can make for hours of discovery and familiarization with system fundamentals. It's an approachability thing, and we've totally lost touch with it as a modern industry in my opinion.