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Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism. Regular users on linux should be using their p

Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism. Regular users on linux should be using their package manager to install new software. Say what you want about Debian's volunteers, but they're a hell of a lot more trustworthy than the average windows software download website.

tumult 3y ago
Regular users on Linux shouldn’t run commercial software?
- washadjeffmad 3y ago
  Is commercial software incapable of being packaged?
  - iscream26 3y ago
    No, but packaging a software package for every Linux distro that exists is unfeasible. Not that I care though, I don't run commercial software. But, you know, devil's advocate and all that. Still, I completely understand why someone might be frustrated by the way software is usually installed in Linux if they were, say, a game developer.
    - askiiart 3y ago
      Yes, packaging a software package for every Linux distro _is_ unfeasible, but have you ever used Linux? There are snaps, flatpaks, and AppImages, which can all run in any distro, and are generally more secure than "native" packages (for lack of a better word).
      - iscream26 3y ago
        > Snaps A technology superseded by Flatpaks, yet pushed incessantly by Canonical, a befuddling move that I still don't quite understand. Rough to use in any other distro. > AppImages Speaking from experience, these don't run on every distro. So they fail to fulfill their intended purpose. As far as I'm concerned, that makes distributing software as AppImages a no-go. > Flatpak Better than any of the technologies previously quoted, but it is not without it's own issues. The chances of a Flatpak working on any particular distro are acceptably high, but they still suffer from the same problem AppImages do. I've had an instance were a an app refused to run on OpenSUSE, even though it was working completely fine on Fedora (I was using Flathub's repo on both distros, I wasn't using Fedora's, just to clarify). I think it was Firefox, though I'm not 100% on that. Still, I'm yet to see a commercial software being distributed as a Flatpak. My guess is that it's all more of a hassle than it is worth. Which, I guess you could say that about packaging commercial software for Linux in general. So, we're back to square one with the chicken and the egg problem that Linux suffers from. Though nowadays it's less severe what with the existence of SteamOS and all of that, so at least there is a substantial marketshare, small as it is. EDIT: fixed vertical spacing.
        moqmar 3y ago
        How do you define "commercial software"? Spotify, Zoom, Steam, Discord, Postman, IDEA Ultimate, and lots of other end-user software that is built by companies and where people pay for things (i.e. commercial software?) is available through Flathub. Most commercial software in general can be downloaded as a free demo version and then activated with a license key or account, and that model works really well with Flatpak and even Flathub.
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      > packaging a software package for every Linux distro that exists is unfeasible. For every Linux distro, sure, but it is feasible to create an apt repo and a Yum repo, and don't those cover the vast majority of distros by usage?
    - ilyt 3y ago
      99% of software packed for Debian will just work with any of the derivatives. No idea how it looks like on the RPM side, but as long as your distro is new enough, 3rd party software packaged for Ubuntu usually works on Debian and 3rd party software packaged for Debian near-always works on derivatives.
  - tumult 3y ago
    Incapable of being packaged? Usually not. Incapable of being included in a distro’s repositories? Usually, yes.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Commercial software vendors can provide the source and build procedure.
  - the_af 3y ago
    How can you vet the source and build procedure? Assuming this is a commercial vendor not available through your package manager, and that you must go to the website, pay and get a download link (with source in this scenario), how is this fundamentally different to a Windows user paying for and downloading something bundled with malware? Were Linux to go mainstream, it'd be unrealistic to ask users to vet the source code! Who has the time and expertise? You fundamentally rely on others to tell you it's safe. On Linux it's a safe bet, since malware authors are less interested in targeting it.
haswell 3y ago
Shouldn't perhaps (with caveats, and therein lies the rub), but is there a reason to believe that they won't? I'm torn on this. On the one hand, yes, a "regular" user should be using a distro that has a wide array of natively packaged software, and relying on that as much as possible. But not all software is distributed this way. And many "regular" users will be coming from a Windows background, meaning they're not going to recognize the fact that the site they found when googling for "Install Spotify on Ubuntu" that tells them to open a command prompt and paste this command or download this .deb file is actually malicious. In practice, they're susceptible to the same kinds of attacks they would be on Windows.
- mindslight 3y ago
  That blame still appropriately lies with maladaptive behaviors learned from Windows. The only way to completely stop users being susceptible to the "attack" of them phrasing their desires as web searches and then blindly following whatever malicious instructions come up is to fully remove administrator privileges and lock them out of "their" computers. But doing this at the level of the OS producer is utterly at odds with the foundation of a free and open society. The incremental way to solve this problem is through various rules based around users engaging with details of the OS. One very simple one of these is "only install software through the system package manager". If users violate those rules, short of the above "solution", there is literally nothing that can be done to help them.
  - the_af 3y ago
    What about things that are not in their package manager, like most games? "Only download through this walled garden [Steam, GOG Galaxy, etc]"? So walled gardens are the answer?
    - mindslight 3y ago
      Yes, gardens are one answer, and likely the best one currently, for non-webapps. Distro package repositories themselves are the original gardens. People tend to give them a pass because having good incentives have kept them decently honest, but distro package repositories are fundamentally gardens. Gardens allow you to make a small number of trust decisions, and then trust all the software they have vetted by extension. Note that I'm leaving out "walled" because multiple software sources can coexist. "Walled" only comes about when some company tries to constrain you to their singular source.
whyoh 3y ago
>Say what you want about Debian's volunteers, but they're a hell of a lot more trustworthy than the average windows software download website. Really? Software developers, who distribute through their websites, have an economic incentive to not give users malware. I'm not sure the same applies to Debian's volunteers. I don't even know who these volunteers are.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Average windows user does a websearch for software and very often finds not the first-party website operated by the developer, but instead finds websites like sourceforge, cnet, softpedia, etc. Downloading sketchy freeware from third parties is Windows culture. This culture is encouraged by Microsoft not vetting and packaging free software themselves like Linux distros do.
  - _gabe_ 3y ago
    I don't know where you've gotten the idea that Windows will just run whatever software you provide it without saying anything. Executables must be signed with a trusted CA. You can get this trust by buying a CA and waiting for reputation to build (which means any malware you produce can be tracked back to your business), submitting the software to Microsoft for malware analysis, or waiting a very long time for reputation to build[0]. If your executable doesn't have trust, a scary warning pops up (or Windows blocks the app from running) and tells the user Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk. This seems about as effective as having a bunch of random people vetting packages for a Linux distro. [0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-the-windows-defender-smartscreen-prevented-an-unrecognized-app-fro/66582477#66582477 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-th...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - mindslight 3y ago
      Sure, if by "scary warning" you mean the click through nags that Windows pops up early and often (sometimes multiple times for a single action) and that have trained generations to ignore software warnings and dialogs in general. I honestly just installed my first non-throwaway Windows VM in a long while, and I was appalled how the state of the art in Windows "security" is still stuck where it was a decade ago.
majkinetor 3y ago
That is nonsence. On various distributions, packages are just packed stuff rom the vendor site. Package manager has little to do with security, unless you count hash checking as one. Its about automation. Besides, windows has multiple good package managers sine long time ago. BTW, to demonstrate the invalidness of the argument, you don't have to look further then nvm package manager...
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > That is nonsence. On various distributions, packages are just packed stuff rom the vendor site. If it's actually from the vendor that's already an improvement over the typical Windows experience.
shortrounddev2 3y ago
I think it's pretty common these days to have people git clone a repo and then build it. Not everything is on a package manager, and I see fewer new things on aptitude. At best, they're available as modules in npm or pip to be installed globally
- didntcheck 3y ago
  I would guess most of those are tools aimed at developers, who can take that risk if they wish. For most users, almost anything they want is either in official repos, or in Flatpaks, which offer some sandboxing (although I guess a malicious Flatpak could just ask for excessive permissions, like a random apk)
  - the_af 3y ago
    Developers are less common than regular users, but still they are among the "common" users of operating systems, so that use case must be handled. Malware on Windows also gets distributed in tools supposedly for developers, after all.
- smodo 3y ago
  I just said ‘git clone’ to my wife and she slapped me in the face. I’m sorry but for the aforementioned regular users this is nowhere near common.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Agreed about `git clone`, but installing things from the web is one of the expected usages of any system. For regular users. Lots of indie and non-commercial (and even commercial) stuff to download this way. In Linux, .sh installers are common. GOG games get distributed this way. If your wife still metaphorically slaps you when you mention .sh installers, it's only because she doesn't play games on Linux. She wouldn't know how to use apt either. I think in the end the truth is that Windows is more targeted by malware because it's more widespread than Linux.
  - callalex 3y ago
the_af 3y ago
> Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism. I strongly disagree. "Only download from here; if it doesn't have what you want, though luck". Also, this seems like an argument in favor of a walled garden. If so, I suppose that would fix Windows.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > "Only download from here; if it doesn't have what you want, though luck". It's not that doing otherwise is prohibited. It's that doing otherwise should get your hackles up. Which is why it isn't this: > this seems like an argument in favor of a walled garden. There are no walls. It's just a garden. But you have to understand that if you leave the garden, you're on your own. For software developers and IT professionals, that's fine. They have a professional knowledge of the reputation of the source or know how to read the code, or how to set up a virtual machine if they want to try it but don't trust it. And if an ordinary user who is rightly wary of doing that still wants to get the latest AI thing from github, they call up their friend the software developer or their company's IT department or pay a computer repair shop they trust to set it up for them. But that should be rare, because anything which is both popular and safe should promptly get added to the package manager.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Agreed, not a "walled" garden but a garden. Essentially an app store. So essentially if Windows had this, problem fixed? Or put another way, if most users came to Linux and started downloading crap from everywhere, there would be incentive for malware authors to write it for Linux, bringing it to the current situation with Windows?
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > So essentially if Windows had this, problem fixed? The problem is that the nature of Windows isn't to have this. Linux package managers are run by the community. They basically include anything popular that meets the licensing requirements to allow them to redistribute it. Windows instead has a "store" that wants to extract a vig, but because most of the software people use on Windows is commercial, the vendors then avoid to store to avoid the vig and the default is to install things from random websites. And even if they fixed that, people are used to doing it the other way, vendors have already spent the time to set up alternate distribution infrastructure and they don't trust Microsoft not to reverse course once a critical mass of things are using their system and they can increase the friction to installing things from outside of it and then turn the screws on anything inside it. To make it work there you would need the distribution system to be run by multiple independent third parties so they'd have to compete with each other to keep distribution margins low. There probably is a market for a third party "store" for Windows that pays the 3% to the credit cards and then distributes the apps via P2P so they can charge no more than 5% to app developers, which the app developers might then actually use because they don't have to build their own system for payments and updates. But the stores want to charge 30% and then the developers don't want to use the stores.
26fingies 3y ago
> Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism have you ever met a regular user?
reisse 3y ago
> Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism. Sure, downloading executables and running them in UAC-protected environment is a Windowsism. Linux way is to copy commands from a random web page and run them as root. Of course all the commands on how-to sites in search results are trustworthy!
salawat 3y ago
<violent head shake, spilled drink> Excuse me, what? Downloading via web browser was the original means (besides ftp) of getting anything. Hell tarball distribution was how everyone used to move bits around. Package maintainers are not Linux. Never will be, never have been. Linux may start with a distro or live CD, but from there it's you arranging things in a way that best works for you. Or are you going to try to sell me on the fact that Linux From Scratch is basically pushing you to wget source tarballs, is peak windowsism? If anything, distribution package managers are more of a windowsism than anything else. About the most I tend to allow myself is to use the apt-ified form of software install after I've torn apart an sbopkg build from source. Even on windows I've gotten to the point I've started dumping symbol tables from binaries, for all the cold comfort and reminder that the world is a capitalist hellhole that offers nothing but clients of servers looking to charge you rent anymore. How do you ever expect to learn how your computer works and how to drive it if you don't read?
- the_af 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm nodding in agreement with you. I'm surprised by some of the answers I'm getting -- and I'm both a Linux fan and an almost exclusive user for the past 20 years. Yet I don't delude myself about the ton of crap I download in order to get things to be the way I want. Sometimes it's Steam, sometimes it's GOG, sometimes it's the official repo, sometimes it's a PPA, sometimes it's just random stuff on the web. And yes -- downloading stuff from the web is how it's supposed to be used. Have people really changed so much that this is now frowned upon? In any case, I still think we're "safe" because malware authors don't think it's worth their time to target Linux.
AussieWog93 3y ago
>Regular users on linux should be using their package manager to install new software. Unfortunately not at all feasible for a small dev releasing software on Linux. The choice is either to support 15 different package managers yourself (including QA!) or just hope that the community gets it right. I eventually refused to support any user who didn't download the AppImage directly from my GitHub page because the distro-specific versions would frequently break.
klyrs 3y ago
Aside from Chromebook and Android, there aren't enough Linux users for this to mean much. I'd venture that "regular" Linux users aren't "regular" in the manner that you describe -- we build, and that's why we're on Linux. We "regulars" download software that moves faster than maintainers can keep up, because that's necessary for the things we're building.

tumult 3y ago

Regular users on Linux shouldn’t run commercial software?

washadjeffmad 3y ago
Is commercial software incapable of being packaged?
- iscream26 3y ago
  No, but packaging a software package for every Linux distro that exists is unfeasible. Not that I care though, I don't run commercial software. But, you know, devil's advocate and all that. Still, I completely understand why someone might be frustrated by the way software is usually installed in Linux if they were, say, a game developer.
  - askiiart 3y ago
    Yes, packaging a software package for every Linux distro _is_ unfeasible, but have you ever used Linux? There are snaps, flatpaks, and AppImages, which can all run in any distro, and are generally more secure than "native" packages (for lack of a better word).
    - iscream26 3y ago
      > Snaps A technology superseded by Flatpaks, yet pushed incessantly by Canonical, a befuddling move that I still don't quite understand. Rough to use in any other distro. > AppImages Speaking from experience, these don't run on every distro. So they fail to fulfill their intended purpose. As far as I'm concerned, that makes distributing software as AppImages a no-go. > Flatpak Better than any of the technologies previously quoted, but it is not without it's own issues. The chances of a Flatpak working on any particular distro are acceptably high, but they still suffer from the same problem AppImages do. I've had an instance were a an app refused to run on OpenSUSE, even though it was working completely fine on Fedora (I was using Flathub's repo on both distros, I wasn't using Fedora's, just to clarify). I think it was Firefox, though I'm not 100% on that. Still, I'm yet to see a commercial software being distributed as a Flatpak. My guess is that it's all more of a hassle than it is worth. Which, I guess you could say that about packaging commercial software for Linux in general. So, we're back to square one with the chicken and the egg problem that Linux suffers from. Though nowadays it's less severe what with the existence of SteamOS and all of that, so at least there is a substantial marketshare, small as it is. EDIT: fixed vertical spacing.
      - moqmar 3y ago
        How do you define "commercial software"? Spotify, Zoom, Steam, Discord, Postman, IDEA Ultimate, and lots of other end-user software that is built by companies and where people pay for things (i.e. commercial software?) is available through Flathub. Most commercial software in general can be downloaded as a free demo version and then activated with a license key or account, and that model works really well with Flatpak and even Flathub.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    > packaging a software package for every Linux distro that exists is unfeasible. For every Linux distro, sure, but it is feasible to create an apt repo and a Yum repo, and don't those cover the vast majority of distros by usage?
  - ilyt 3y ago
    99% of software packed for Debian will just work with any of the derivatives. No idea how it looks like on the RPM side, but as long as your distro is new enough, 3rd party software packaged for Ubuntu usually works on Debian and 3rd party software packaged for Debian near-always works on derivatives.
- tumult 3y ago
  Incapable of being packaged? Usually not. Incapable of being included in a distro’s repositories? Usually, yes.
prmoustache 3y ago
Commercial software vendors can provide the source and build procedure.
- the_af 3y ago
  How can you vet the source and build procedure? Assuming this is a commercial vendor not available through your package manager, and that you must go to the website, pay and get a download link (with source in this scenario), how is this fundamentally different to a Windows user paying for and downloading something bundled with malware? Were Linux to go mainstream, it'd be unrealistic to ask users to vet the source code! Who has the time and expertise? You fundamentally rely on others to tell you it's safe. On Linux it's a safe bet, since malware authors are less interested in targeting it.

haswell 3y ago

Shouldn't perhaps (with caveats, and therein lies the rub), but is there a reason to believe that they won't? I'm torn on this. On the one hand, yes, a "regular" user should be using a distro that has a wide array of natively packaged software, and relying on that as much as possible. But not all software is distributed this way. And many "regular" users will be coming from a Windows background, meaning they're not going to recognize the fact that the site they found when googling for "Install Spotify on Ubuntu" that tells them to open a command prompt and paste this command or download this .deb file is actually malicious. In practice, they're susceptible to the same kinds of attacks they would be on Windows.

mindslight 3y ago
That blame still appropriately lies with maladaptive behaviors learned from Windows. The only way to completely stop users being susceptible to the "attack" of them phrasing their desires as web searches and then blindly following whatever malicious instructions come up is to fully remove administrator privileges and lock them out of "their" computers. But doing this at the level of the OS producer is utterly at odds with the foundation of a free and open society. The incremental way to solve this problem is through various rules based around users engaging with details of the OS. One very simple one of these is "only install software through the system package manager". If users violate those rules, short of the above "solution", there is literally nothing that can be done to help them.
- the_af 3y ago
  What about things that are not in their package manager, like most games? "Only download through this walled garden [Steam, GOG Galaxy, etc]"? So walled gardens are the answer?
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Yes, gardens are one answer, and likely the best one currently, for non-webapps. Distro package repositories themselves are the original gardens. People tend to give them a pass because having good incentives have kept them decently honest, but distro package repositories are fundamentally gardens. Gardens allow you to make a small number of trust decisions, and then trust all the software they have vetted by extension. Note that I'm leaving out "walled" because multiple software sources can coexist. "Walled" only comes about when some company tries to constrain you to their singular source.

whyoh 3y ago

>Say what you want about Debian's volunteers, but they're a hell of a lot more trustworthy than the average windows software download website. Really? Software developers, who distribute through their websites, have an economic incentive to not give users malware. I'm not sure the same applies to Debian's volunteers. I don't even know who these volunteers are.

mcpackieh 3y ago
Average windows user does a websearch for software and very often finds not the first-party website operated by the developer, but instead finds websites like sourceforge, cnet, softpedia, etc. Downloading sketchy freeware from third parties is Windows culture. This culture is encouraged by Microsoft not vetting and packaging free software themselves like Linux distros do.
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  I don't know where you've gotten the idea that Windows will just run whatever software you provide it without saying anything. Executables must be signed with a trusted CA. You can get this trust by buying a CA and waiting for reputation to build (which means any malware you produce can be tracked back to your business), submitting the software to Microsoft for malware analysis, or waiting a very long time for reputation to build[0]. If your executable doesn't have trust, a scary warning pops up (or Windows blocks the app from running) and tells the user Windows Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk. This seems about as effective as having a bunch of random people vetting packages for a Linux distro. [0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-the-windows-defender-smartscreen-prevented-an-unrecognized-app-fro/66582477#66582477 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-th...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Sure, if by "scary warning" you mean the click through nags that Windows pops up early and often (sometimes multiple times for a single action) and that have trained generations to ignore software warnings and dialogs in general. I honestly just installed my first non-throwaway Windows VM in a long while, and I was appalled how the state of the art in Windows "security" is still stuck where it was a decade ago.

majkinetor 3y ago

That is nonsence. On various distributions, packages are just packed stuff rom the vendor site. Package manager has little to do with security, unless you count hash checking as one. Its about automation. Besides, windows has multiple good package managers sine long time ago. BTW, to demonstrate the invalidness of the argument, you don't have to look further then nvm package manager...

mcpackieh 3y ago
> That is nonsence. On various distributions, packages are just packed stuff rom the vendor site. If it's actually from the vendor that's already an improvement over the typical Windows experience.

shortrounddev2 3y ago

I think it's pretty common these days to have people git clone a repo and then build it. Not everything is on a package manager, and I see fewer new things on aptitude. At best, they're available as modules in npm or pip to be installed globally

didntcheck 3y ago
I would guess most of those are tools aimed at developers, who can take that risk if they wish. For most users, almost anything they want is either in official repos, or in Flatpaks, which offer some sandboxing (although I guess a malicious Flatpak could just ask for excessive permissions, like a random apk)
- the_af 3y ago
  Developers are less common than regular users, but still they are among the "common" users of operating systems, so that use case must be handled. Malware on Windows also gets distributed in tools supposedly for developers, after all.
smodo 3y ago
I just said ‘git clone’ to my wife and she slapped me in the face. I’m sorry but for the aforementioned regular users this is nowhere near common.
- the_af 3y ago
  Agreed about `git clone`, but installing things from the web is one of the expected usages of any system. For regular users. Lots of indie and non-commercial (and even commercial) stuff to download this way. In Linux, .sh installers are common. GOG games get distributed this way. If your wife still metaphorically slaps you when you mention .sh installers, it's only because she doesn't play games on Linux. She wouldn't know how to use apt either. I think in the end the truth is that Windows is more targeted by malware because it's more widespread than Linux.
- callalex 3y ago

the_af 3y ago

> Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism. I strongly disagree. "Only download from here; if it doesn't have what you want, though luck". Also, this seems like an argument in favor of a walled garden. If so, I suppose that would fix Windows.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> "Only download from here; if it doesn't have what you want, though luck". It's not that doing otherwise is prohibited. It's that doing otherwise should get your hackles up. Which is why it isn't this: > this seems like an argument in favor of a walled garden. There are no walls. It's just a garden. But you have to understand that if you leave the garden, you're on your own. For software developers and IT professionals, that's fine. They have a professional knowledge of the reputation of the source or know how to read the code, or how to set up a virtual machine if they want to try it but don't trust it. And if an ordinary user who is rightly wary of doing that still wants to get the latest AI thing from github, they call up their friend the software developer or their company's IT department or pay a computer repair shop they trust to set it up for them. But that should be rare, because anything which is both popular and safe should promptly get added to the package manager.
- the_af 3y ago
  Agreed, not a "walled" garden but a garden. Essentially an app store. So essentially if Windows had this, problem fixed? Or put another way, if most users came to Linux and started downloading crap from everywhere, there would be incentive for malware authors to write it for Linux, bringing it to the current situation with Windows?
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > So essentially if Windows had this, problem fixed? The problem is that the nature of Windows isn't to have this. Linux package managers are run by the community. They basically include anything popular that meets the licensing requirements to allow them to redistribute it. Windows instead has a "store" that wants to extract a vig, but because most of the software people use on Windows is commercial, the vendors then avoid to store to avoid the vig and the default is to install things from random websites. And even if they fixed that, people are used to doing it the other way, vendors have already spent the time to set up alternate distribution infrastructure and they don't trust Microsoft not to reverse course once a critical mass of things are using their system and they can increase the friction to installing things from outside of it and then turn the screws on anything inside it. To make it work there you would need the distribution system to be run by multiple independent third parties so they'd have to compete with each other to keep distribution margins low. There probably is a market for a third party "store" for Windows that pays the 3% to the credit cards and then distributes the apps via P2P so they can charge no more than 5% to app developers, which the app developers might then actually use because they don't have to build their own system for payments and updates. But the stores want to charge 30% and then the developers don't want to use the stores.

26fingies 3y ago

> Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism have you ever met a regular user?

reisse 3y ago

> Regular users on linux shouldn't be downloading software through their web-broswer at all; that's a Windowsism. Sure, downloading executables and running them in UAC-protected environment is a Windowsism. Linux way is to copy commands from a random web page and run them as root. Of course all the commands on how-to sites in search results are trustworthy!

salawat 3y ago

<violent head shake, spilled drink> Excuse me, what? Downloading via web browser was the original means (besides ftp) of getting anything. Hell tarball distribution was how everyone used to move bits around. Package maintainers are not Linux. Never will be, never have been. Linux may start with a distro or live CD, but from there it's you arranging things in a way that best works for you. Or are you going to try to sell me on the fact that Linux From Scratch is basically pushing you to wget source tarballs, is peak windowsism? If anything, distribution package managers are more of a windowsism than anything else. About the most I tend to allow myself is to use the apt-ified form of software install after I've torn apart an sbopkg build from source. Even on windows I've gotten to the point I've started dumping symbol tables from binaries, for all the cold comfort and reminder that the world is a capitalist hellhole that offers nothing but clients of servers looking to charge you rent anymore. How do you ever expect to learn how your computer works and how to drive it if you don't read?

the_af 3y ago
Yeah, I'm nodding in agreement with you. I'm surprised by some of the answers I'm getting -- and I'm both a Linux fan and an almost exclusive user for the past 20 years. Yet I don't delude myself about the ton of crap I download in order to get things to be the way I want. Sometimes it's Steam, sometimes it's GOG, sometimes it's the official repo, sometimes it's a PPA, sometimes it's just random stuff on the web. And yes -- downloading stuff from the web is how it's supposed to be used. Have people really changed so much that this is now frowned upon? In any case, I still think we're "safe" because malware authors don't think it's worth their time to target Linux.

AussieWog93 3y ago

>Regular users on linux should be using their package manager to install new software. Unfortunately not at all feasible for a small dev releasing software on Linux. The choice is either to support 15 different package managers yourself (including QA!) or just hope that the community gets it right. I eventually refused to support any user who didn't download the AppImage directly from my GitHub page because the distro-specific versions would frequently break.

klyrs 3y ago

Aside from Chromebook and Android, there aren't enough Linux users for this to mean much. I'd venture that "regular" Linux users aren't "regular" in the manner that you describe -- we build, and that's why we're on Linux. We "regulars" download software that moves faster than maintainers can keep up, because that's necessary for the things we're building.