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> It's actually pretty great. Subjective, but needless to say I disagree. I disagree with all of your reasoning too. Inserting a middleman into the software d

• rossvor 5y ago
  Why such a snarky reply? Some users do find value in having different flavor distributions and them exercising some control on the source, you obviously do not. Yes that means spending resources on this, and that will sometimes cause issues and bugs, same as with any other extra code. >But hey, you guys keep doing what you're doing and ignoring what potential users want Both me and the parent users are not "potential" users but actual users. Why we shouldn't count but some "potential" users should? We already have plenty of distributions which don't do patches. Parent poster didn't mention anything about "Year of the Linux Desktop" so your diatribe about it is completely uncalled for too. Plenty of people are absolutely fine with current trajectory of user base and don't subscribe to prioritizing user growth above serving existing users. It's a bit lame when a positive well-written article gets the usual negative response about how everyone is doing everything wrong and "Linux desktop is completely broken".
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > Why such a snarky reply? Because at this point I guess I just assume I'm talking to an evangelist about 90% of the time. That seems to be the case with people who insist that the Linux Desktop Experience is "actually pretty great". > Some users do find value in having different flavor distributions and them exercising some control on the source, you obviously do not. The fact that Linux Desktop needs hundreds of bespoke distributions to offer those choices is precisely the problem, in my opinion. A well put together system shouldn't require everything to be compiled just-so and all together by an army of volunteers to work properly. You should just be able to use the software you want, as up-to-date or out-of-date as you want, why is that so hard in Linux?
    • rossvor 5y ago
      While you see it as problem, lots of people see this as a feature, just different priorities that's all. I do prefer distros which curate the packages they maintain to provide some logic and predictability to the way packages are meant to be used, where and how they store the config files, remove various nonsense from it and so forth. And all the issues you've listed just isn't a problem for me. "Well put together" system isn't an objective measurement and opinions vary. And anyway your app based view is slowly becoming more prominent, with so much development dedicated to various app based solutions(appImage, flatpak etc). You don't see me complaining about army of volunteers wasting their time. People work on stuff they think is useful to them, nothing to see here or be negative about.
• matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Even Linus has spoken on how much of a pain in the ass it has made it to distribute software I've watched that Q&A before. Linus is of course right but not because of package managers and not because of distribution maintainers. He eventually starts talking about binary interfaces which are the root cause of this issue. The fact is most open source projects out there don't have stable binary interfaces. So we have important libraries in the system breaking working binaries because they do things like change structure layouts and function signatures. This is a problem of the wider free and open source software ecosystem in general. In that same talk he contrasts this with the kernel which does have a stable binary interface and can therefore effortlessly run binaries compiled in the 90s with no changes at all. If all software had stable ABIs, you wouldn't even need packages at all. You'd be able to just compile stuff and distribute that binary directly. > But hey, you guys keep doing what you're doing and ignoring what potential users want. Sure thing. I don't really care at all about what "potential" users want. I'm a programmer and I want a system suitable for programmers. "Normal" people are more than welcome to keep using whatever it is they're still using. If they don't see the value I'm not gonna convince them. With Linux I get to trust that if something's made it into the package repositories then it's trusted by the community. That also means maintainers fix idiotic "features" like old and insecure bundled libraries in the case of dynamically linked distributions, telemetry in the case of a privacy-focused distribution or non-free code in the case of Debian.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > I've watched that Q&A before. Linus is of course right but not because of package managers and not because of distribution maintainers. He eventually starts talking about binary interfaces which are the root cause of this issue. An issue exacerbated by the package managers and repo model. Developers think "why should I bother with binary compatibility when package maintainers are just going to recompile everything anyway?". > If all software had stable ABIs, you wouldn't even need packages at all. You'd be able to just compile stuff and distribute that binary directly. Gee, it's almost like other Desktop OSs did that. > Sure thing. I don't really care at all about what "potential" users want. I'm a programmer and I want a system suitable for programmers. "Normal" people are more than welcome to keep using whatever it is they're still using. If they don't see the value I'm not gonna convince them. That's fair, I'm just tired of dealing with evangelists. There are reasons people use other OSs and it isn't because they're stupid or uninformed or whatever nonsense people use to feel superior. In my case, it's because I don't like the way Linux does things. > With Linux I get to trust that if something's made it into the package repositories then it's trusted by the community. That also means maintainers fix idiotic "features" like old and insecure bundled libraries in the case of dynamically linked distributions, telemetry in the case of a privacy-focused distribution or non-free code in the case of Debian. They also fix idiot features like actually-working cryptography (Debian), or a "you're using a horrifically out of date version" notification from the developer (also Debian). Oh, and of course the whole model really can't handle simple tasks like: - Installing software to different disks - Installing more than one version of the software (unless explicitly packaged separately) - Choosing to have a mix of old and stable versions of some software and the latest hotness of other software These are all things that are trivial in other operating systems, but I need to use something like AppImage to get them in Linux software. Sadly not a lot of software is distributed that way because the culture of Linux is that everything must flow through a walled garden repo for your own good, and if you don't like then compile from source.