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There’s often inconsistency with how .deb files are treated by the desktop environment. I have some systems where clicking them just opens like an archive. They

There’s often inconsistency with how .deb files are treated by the desktop environment. I have some systems where clicking them just opens like an archive. They should just launch an installer, but the fact that the installer can be reassigned makes the behavior inconsistent. I just use dpkg -i but that’s not exactly something you can find out without dedicated research.

pxc 4y ago
> I just use dpkg -i but that’s not exactly something you can find out without dedicated research. Downloading individual DEB files is not a great way to go, but if you must, you're better off using something like gdebi than dpkg to install them. If you use gdebi, apt will still try to resolve dependencies when installing the package for you. With dpkg, you have to do all of that manually, so dpkg is only useful for installing the worst kinds of DEB files (ones that ignore the real packaging system and bundle all of their dependencies). If you only want the command line utility instead of the GUI DEB file handler, grab gdebi-core. I also wanna return to this, briefly: > not exactly something you can find out without dedicated research. It bugs the hell out of me that some distros (like the Debian that comes on WSL, for example) does not include absolutely basic Unix essentials like the man command and friends. Because this shouldn't be something that takes extended research. The old Unix tools for documenting the system internally can handle this perfectly! If you run apropos deb you will get a nice short list of things used for working with DEB files, including dpkg. So even if it's not the best tool it should be at least enough to find something for working with those files, without having to Google around for a long time or install any new software.
hulitu 4y ago
> They should just launch an installer The organization of Windows malware creators would like to thank you for your idea. /s. DEB is an archive format.
- pxc 4y ago
  A bit more charitably: sometimes you might want to open up a DEB file and poke around in it in a system which is not Debian-based. AUR package authors do this on Arch, for example, as do the maintainers of the Nixpkgs entries for some proprietary software which is only distributed upstream as DEB files. So the Linux desktop ecosystem as a whole doesn't necessarily know ahead of time which way you want to use a DEB file. Of course, an archive manager which can detect whether you're on a Debian-based system or not, and appropriately choose whether or not to show you an 'install' button after opening the archive, is very much possible and would be quite nice.
- dmonitor 4y ago
  That's kind of the point on .deb not being the best format for distributing packages. Having it be treated by the OS as both an archive format and an application is unnecessarily confusing. MacOS applications are secretly just folders, but most users don't even know that. It might be obvious to someone like you or I, but most people don't want to do more than just click the app and type their password to launch/install it. I have more than a handful of gripes about Windows, but I can at least say that clicking an .exe has a very clearly defined and understandable behavior.
VTimofeenko 4y ago
That's probably stemming from different configurations of MIME database on different distros.

pxc 4y ago

> I just use dpkg -i but that’s not exactly something you can find out without dedicated research. Downloading individual DEB files is not a great way to go, but if you must, you're better off using something like gdebi than dpkg to install them. If you use gdebi, apt will still try to resolve dependencies when installing the package for you. With dpkg, you have to do all of that manually, so dpkg is only useful for installing the worst kinds of DEB files (ones that ignore the real packaging system and bundle all of their dependencies). If you only want the command line utility instead of the GUI DEB file handler, grab gdebi-core. I also wanna return to this, briefly: > not exactly something you can find out without dedicated research. It bugs the hell out of me that some distros (like the Debian that comes on WSL, for example) does not include absolutely basic Unix essentials like the man command and friends. Because this shouldn't be something that takes extended research. The old Unix tools for documenting the system internally can handle this perfectly! If you run apropos deb you will get a nice short list of things used for working with DEB files, including dpkg. So even if it's not the best tool it should be at least enough to find something for working with those files, without having to Google around for a long time or install any new software.

hulitu 4y ago

> They should just launch an installer The organization of Windows malware creators would like to thank you for your idea. /s. DEB is an archive format.

pxc 4y ago
A bit more charitably: sometimes you might want to open up a DEB file and poke around in it in a system which is not Debian-based. AUR package authors do this on Arch, for example, as do the maintainers of the Nixpkgs entries for some proprietary software which is only distributed upstream as DEB files. So the Linux desktop ecosystem as a whole doesn't necessarily know ahead of time which way you want to use a DEB file. Of course, an archive manager which can detect whether you're on a Debian-based system or not, and appropriately choose whether or not to show you an 'install' button after opening the archive, is very much possible and would be quite nice.
dmonitor 4y ago
That's kind of the point on .deb not being the best format for distributing packages. Having it be treated by the OS as both an archive format and an application is unnecessarily confusing. MacOS applications are secretly just folders, but most users don't even know that. It might be obvious to someone like you or I, but most people don't want to do more than just click the app and type their password to launch/install it. I have more than a handful of gripes about Windows, but I can at least say that clicking an .exe has a very clearly defined and understandable behavior.

VTimofeenko 4y ago

That's probably stemming from different configurations of MIME database on different distros.