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See, this is why Linux distributions piss me off. You have an upgrade path that breaks, and when it does the response is "oh, you used your Linux distribution i

See, this is why Linux distributions piss me off. You have an upgrade path that breaks, and when it does the response is "oh, you used your Linux distribution in a way we said you could in our docs? why would you think the upgrade would work after that?!" Distros just don't care about the user experience. They care about making it look fancy, or shifting around designs, or introducing brand new components that break old functionality. But they don't care if people actually have problems using it. Every bug is the user's fault, and every reinvention-of-the-wheel (that actually works worse than the previous wheel) is a praiseworthy accomplishment. Regressions are nonexistent, hardware compatibility/stability is a guessing game, solving common problems is left to the user to Google, all the interfaces and apps are inconsistent, there are no interactive guides to design changes, and just getting some basic hardware like a Bluetooth adapter to work is a multi-day adventure. (And I'm a 20+ year Linux veteran.) I still use Linux because I know that my hardware will mostly work, and that once I get past a month of fixing bugs on a new install, I can basically make it do what I want. But it's so frustrating to use compared to Windows. The only reason I don't use Windows instead is performance and troubleshooting is worse there (for the most part) and security is scarier. But I want to throw both Linux and Windows in the trash. And I won't buy a Mac because the price and incompatibility is absurd.

rlpb 5y ago
> "oh, you used your Linux distribution in a way we said you could in our docs?" Huh? Adding third party repositories has never been a supported path. You're welcome to use them since you own your system, but the future stability of your system is then down to the ability of the third party to not break it. Usually third party apt packagers don't consider future release upgrades.
- josephg 5y ago
  What do you expect users to do in this case, when apt has old or missing software? Are users expected to limit themselves to the software in the main repositories? Windows and macos don’t have this constraint. Installing applications from the internet never breaks windows update or macos. (Sometimes macos updates break homebrew or kernel extensions, but that’s kind of easier to deal with.)
  - rlpb 5y ago
    Users can only realistically do what their third party software providers tell them to do. The third party software providers, however, owe it to their users to provide reliable and responsible mechanisms for users to consume their stuff. Providing a third party apt repository that breaks the user doing a future release upgrade is not it. Now we have snaps, AppImage, Flatpak. These mechanisms can be used by third party software providers to provide safe and reliable (for the system) software. Any of them are better than providing third party apt repositories. > Windows and macos don’t have this constraint. Installing applications from the internet never breaks windows update or macos. That's because it isn't the norm for third party software to hack up the OS in order to install themselves, rather than use the mechanisms provided. It used to be - remember DLL hell? They got away from that, and our ecosystem needs to do the same.

rlpb 5y ago

> "oh, you used your Linux distribution in a way we said you could in our docs?" Huh? Adding third party repositories has never been a supported path. You're welcome to use them since you own your system, but the future stability of your system is then down to the ability of the third party to not break it. Usually third party apt packagers don't consider future release upgrades.

josephg 5y ago
What do you expect users to do in this case, when apt has old or missing software? Are users expected to limit themselves to the software in the main repositories? Windows and macos don’t have this constraint. Installing applications from the internet never breaks windows update or macos. (Sometimes macos updates break homebrew or kernel extensions, but that’s kind of easier to deal with.)
- rlpb 5y ago
  Users can only realistically do what their third party software providers tell them to do. The third party software providers, however, owe it to their users to provide reliable and responsible mechanisms for users to consume their stuff. Providing a third party apt repository that breaks the user doing a future release upgrade is not it. Now we have snaps, AppImage, Flatpak. These mechanisms can be used by third party software providers to provide safe and reliable (for the system) software. Any of them are better than providing third party apt repositories. > Windows and macos don’t have this constraint. Installing applications from the internet never breaks windows update or macos. That's because it isn't the norm for third party software to hack up the OS in order to install themselves, rather than use the mechanisms provided. It used to be - remember DLL hell? They got away from that, and our ecosystem needs to do the same.