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Could someone here clarify exactly what the problem is? I don't know what Bottles is, or what it means to be "shipped in distribution repositories". What does i

Could someone here clarify exactly what the problem is? I don't know what Bottles is, or what it means to be "shipped in distribution repositories". What does it mean to be "unofficial"?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nailer 4y ago
Bottles is a wine UI and encapsulation layer, similar to the separate previously existing project Bottles, which is is a wine UI and encapsulation layer. This new Bottles project is appealing to the community to change their behaviour as they are doing something the new Bottles finds undesirable.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  Why would you ever use one of these random "Bottles" wrappers instead of the actual Codeweavers Crossover (the company behind many of the salaries of actual Wine developers) is over me.
  - nailer 4y ago
    CodeWeavers also made the original Bottles. From a decade ago: > The Manage Bottles functionality lets you manage the Windows software you have under CrossOver, and displays information regarding the bottles they are placed in. You can think of a bottle as a selfcontained Windows environment. Bottles can come in several different flavors—Win98, Win2K, WinXP, etc. https://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/marketing/ReviewersGuideToCrossOver_v2012.pdf https://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/marketing/Review...
brnt 4y ago
Last time I read about Bottles, they refered to a kind of Wine prefix. A dir or package that'd run your Windows program.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Bottles is a software package that makes it easier to run Windows software in Linux-based operating systems (using WINE as the compatibility layer, hence the name). A Linux distribution (often just "distribution" or "distro") is an operating system that combines an assortment of software packages together; typically a kernel (some version of Linux), core system utilities (coreutils, an init system / service manager), a package manager (program to install software from specified sources; this will become important in a moment), and frequently some sort of graphical system (Desktop Environment). The name is because it distributes a collection of software together. The thing is, the vast majority of software shipped in/by a distribution isn't written by the distro; a distro is at some level simply a collection of scripts to download sources, compile it into package files, and then bundle those into a usable system. While there are exceptions, most distros have official repositories of software that's been packaged for that distro. What's happened here is that Bottles is a software package that explicitly doesn't want distros to ship it. Bottles views the packages built/shipped by Linux distros as "unofficial" because they weren't created by the Bottles project.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rsstack 4y ago
Bottles helps run Windows apps (especially games) on Linux. They have their own installers and updates channel. Generally when using Linux, you will usually install software from the Linux distribution's (like operating system flavor) software repository. It makes dependency management simpler, you get updates only after they're tested, etc. Those repositories are officially supported by the Linux distribution team (which could be employees for a company like Canonical, or volunteers) but not officially supported by the Bottles team. Bottles is asking the various Linux distributions to stop offering Bottles through the distribution repositories. The Bottles team wants to own the relationship with the end-user under their own terms: only recent versions, only installers that were tested by them personally, and they will support the community issues. Today distros often deliver older versions and modified installers, while still sending the community to get support from the Bottles team.
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
  That clears it up mostly, I think. Thanks! How do other software creators deal with this problem? I can see how getting reports for issues could be frustrating if they weren't easy to replicate due to the distribution having a different version of that software.
  - rsstack 4y ago
    I think it's a complicated question to answer because there are so many possible combinations. 1. Simpler software doesn't usually have issues with broken installers. 2. A lot of software doesn't get frequent-enough updates that old versions would matter. 3. High-profile projects usually have personal connections with the major distributions' packaging team (or even a "personal union", where it's actually the same people). And there are other cases. I think Bottles got stuck in a spot where their software is _very_ complicated to install correctly, updates often (young project + interactions with 3rd party software such as games), and they're a small team that doesn't have a way to work efficiently with the distributions.
    - mjw1007 4y ago

Could someone here clarify exactly what the problem is? I don't know what Bottles is, or what it means to be "shipped in distribution repositories". What does it mean to be "unofficial"?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nailer 4y ago

Bottles is a wine UI and encapsulation layer, similar to the separate previously existing project Bottles, which is is a wine UI and encapsulation layer. This new Bottles project is appealing to the community to change their behaviour as they are doing something the new Bottles finds undesirable.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
Why would you ever use one of these random "Bottles" wrappers instead of the actual Codeweavers Crossover (the company behind many of the salaries of actual Wine developers) is over me.
- nailer 4y ago
  CodeWeavers also made the original Bottles. From a decade ago: > The Manage Bottles functionality lets you manage the Windows software you have under CrossOver, and displays information regarding the bottles they are placed in. You can think of a bottle as a selfcontained Windows environment. Bottles can come in several different flavors—Win98, Win2K, WinXP, etc. https://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/marketing/ReviewersGuideToCrossOver_v2012.pdf https://media.codeweavers.com/pub/crossover/marketing/Review...

brnt 4y ago

Last time I read about Bottles, they refered to a kind of Wine prefix. A dir or package that'd run your Windows program.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

Bottles is a software package that makes it easier to run Windows software in Linux-based operating systems (using WINE as the compatibility layer, hence the name). A Linux distribution (often just "distribution" or "distro") is an operating system that combines an assortment of software packages together; typically a kernel (some version of Linux), core system utilities (coreutils, an init system / service manager), a package manager (program to install software from specified sources; this will become important in a moment), and frequently some sort of graphical system (Desktop Environment). The name is because it distributes a collection of software together. The thing is, the vast majority of software shipped in/by a distribution isn't written by the distro; a distro is at some level simply a collection of scripts to download sources, compile it into package files, and then bundle those into a usable system. While there are exceptions, most distros have official repositories of software that's been packaged for that distro. What's happened here is that Bottles is a software package that explicitly doesn't want distros to ship it. Bottles views the packages built/shipped by Linux distros as "unofficial" because they weren't created by the Bottles project.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rsstack 4y ago

Bottles helps run Windows apps (especially games) on Linux. They have their own installers and updates channel. Generally when using Linux, you will usually install software from the Linux distribution's (like operating system flavor) software repository. It makes dependency management simpler, you get updates only after they're tested, etc. Those repositories are officially supported by the Linux distribution team (which could be employees for a company like Canonical, or volunteers) but not officially supported by the Bottles team. Bottles is asking the various Linux distributions to stop offering Bottles through the distribution repositories. The Bottles team wants to own the relationship with the end-user under their own terms: only recent versions, only installers that were tested by them personally, and they will support the community issues. Today distros often deliver older versions and modified installers, while still sending the community to get support from the Bottles team.

Night_Thastus 4y ago
That clears it up mostly, I think. Thanks! How do other software creators deal with this problem? I can see how getting reports for issues could be frustrating if they weren't easy to replicate due to the distribution having a different version of that software.
- rsstack 4y ago
  I think it's a complicated question to answer because there are so many possible combinations. 1. Simpler software doesn't usually have issues with broken installers. 2. A lot of software doesn't get frequent-enough updates that old versions would matter. 3. High-profile projects usually have personal connections with the major distributions' packaging team (or even a "personal union", where it's actually the same people). And there are other cases. I think Bottles got stuck in a spot where their software is _very_ complicated to install correctly, updates often (young project + interactions with 3rd party software such as games), and they're a small team that doesn't have a way to work efficiently with the distributions.
  - mjw1007 4y ago