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I've been saying this same thing for years. Package managers are a nice concept in theory, but Linux on the desktop will never, ever succeed until upgrading (f

by acabal 15y ago

I've been saying this same thing for years. Package managers are a nice concept in theory, but Linux on the desktop will never, ever succeed until upgrading (for example) Firefox doesn't result in an install of Unity. The entire concept of a milestone-based monolithic distro is so broken for desktop use that I can't believe a better alternative hasn't been developed yet. Even as a Linux nerd I'm constantly faced with problems caused by this. I'm stuck on Ubuntu Natty, for example, because it has the last stable version of Compiz that worked for me on the flgrx ATI drivers. If I wanted the latest version of Unity (I don't, I think Unity is terrible, but this is just an example) that means I'd have to upgrade Compiz and everything else and get stuck with all the horrible bugs new Compiz versions have with my drivers. It would also mean upgrading to Gnome 3 which still has many usability regressions (unrelated to Gnome Shell) and in my opinion isn't fully baked yet. I don't want all that shit just to get the latest version of a single package! (You could perhaps pull it off with some PPA mumbo-jumbo, but you'd have to understand what a PPA is, luck out in finding a PPA in the first place, and messing with them can more than likely bork something up. Not something for the average-Joe audience Ubuntu is targeting.) Shared libraries made sense in the days of limited space and resources. They still make sense from a few security perspectives. But from a practical perspective, Windows did it right by allowing programs to ship their own libraries and by doing backwards-compatibility right.

luser001 15y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but people have the exact same problem with Windows (and maybe Mac also; but I don't have much experience with Macs). Many people are staying on XP because they dislike Windows 7/Vista. I suspect the same is happening with Ubuntu. I personally LOVE LOVE LOVE that all my apps are updated by the same program. Instead of the Windows/Mac way of each app running it's own updater. However, I do agree that the UI for upgrading a single app should be made better. Just this week, I finally moved out of Unity while staying with Ubuntu 11.10. My workaround is to move to XFCE (Xubuntu). So far, no problems. Btw, I have Compiz enabled with the proprietary nvidia drivers. You might want to try Xubuntu. It's amazing how easy it was to take out Unity and replace it with xubuntu: sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. The xubuntu people have taken the trouble to interface with all the Ubuntu plumbing (networking, sound, updates etc) via XFCE. Overall I'm impressed with the Ubuntu ecosystem.
- acabal 15y ago
  We're talking about different problems. Windows does not have the problem I'm describing. If I want to update Firefox on Windows XP, I can do that without Windows forcing me to update to Windows 7 as part of the deal. That's the problem. Updating Firefox on Ubuntu 11.04 after a certain (very soon in the future) point in time necessitates an update to Ubuntu XX.YY. In fact you're precisely illustrating my point with your example. That people can choose to stick to XP because they don't like 7 is precisely analogous to wanting to stick with Gnome 2 because I dislike Unity. But the difference is that I can do that in Windows because I can still get app updates in XP for over a decade, but I can't in Linux because app updates are tied to the entire massive distro and everything else that goes with it... often every 6 months. It certainly is possible to upgrade parts of the system using esoteric (to the average-Joe) solutions like PPAs or compiling from source or being forced to switch to a different desktop environment. (Most users don't even know what a DE is!) But the fact that you're forced to turn to such solutions is what I--and the OP and the linked article--argue is the biggest nail in the desktop Linux coffin.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - luser001 15y ago
    > If I want to update Firefox on Windows XP, I can do that without Windows forcing me to update to Windows 7 ... Updating Firefox on Ubuntu 11.04 after a certain (very soon in the future) point in time necessitates an update to Ubuntu XX.YY. I'm not 100% sure about it. As it happens I run both Ubuntu 10.10 (at work) and Ubuntu 11.10. I just saw an alert to upgrade my 10.10 Ubuntu to Firefox 11. I give them major props for keeping an major package like Firefox updated. They probably don't do this for other packages. Now wrt app updates, people have pointed out downthread that PPAs can be added to the system by clicking a specially-encoded URL in Firefox). People on Windows also do things like download the file, locate it, double click, respond to a UAC prompt etc. So installing through PPA isn't that much more complicated. IMHO. Also Ubuntu has a software store, to which developers are free to push their updates. In summary, what people are wishing for in this thread is to have the 3-4 apps they use upgraded to the latest and greatest versions while leaving the core OS and other apps at baseline versions. But ... the solution of using PPA (analogous to downloading the app in Windows) is deemed too nerdy ... Leading to the conclusion that the distro should take responsibility for maintain all the 10s of 1000s of packages for ~10 years. Am I understanding you correctly? Probably ain't gonna happen. Do you really think it would be a step forward if we got rid of the huge number of non-core packages in distros and had to hunt down PPA sources (again, equivalent to downloading apps from different websites in Windows) for each program. I'm not sure. Continuing, I'm not sure the lack of updates for old releases is only a technical problem: XP has an installed base, so people jump through ALL kinds of hoops to make their programs work there. IIRC, there are major differences in audio/video/drivers between Win7 and XP, but people (e.g., Flash/Chrome) still do it. I doubt developers will keep their apps updated and working on XP if it didn't have such a large installed base. End long reply. :)
wmf 15y ago
The entire concept of a milestone-based monolithic distro is so broken for desktop use that I can't believe a better alternative hasn't been developed yet. I feel like even the original 1984 Macintosh was a better alternative. Each app is contained in one file; it has no dependencies other than the OS. There is no need for installers/uninstallers. For updates, even Sparkle (annoying as it is) at least doesn't disrupt your whole system. There are Linux distros that try to work this way, but the upstream developers have become lazy; they expect distros to do packaging for them. This leads to some skewed incentives; I think everything works better when the developer is also responsible for packaging, marketing, and support.

by acabal 15y ago

luser001 15y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but people have the exact same problem with Windows (and maybe Mac also; but I don't have much experience with Macs). Many people are staying on XP because they dislike Windows 7/Vista. I suspect the same is happening with Ubuntu. I personally LOVE LOVE LOVE that all my apps are updated by the same program. Instead of the Windows/Mac way of each app running it's own updater. However, I do agree that the UI for upgrading a single app should be made better. Just this week, I finally moved out of Unity while staying with Ubuntu 11.10. My workaround is to move to XFCE (Xubuntu). So far, no problems. Btw, I have Compiz enabled with the proprietary nvidia drivers. You might want to try Xubuntu. It's amazing how easy it was to take out Unity and replace it with xubuntu: sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. The xubuntu people have taken the trouble to interface with all the Ubuntu plumbing (networking, sound, updates etc) via XFCE. Overall I'm impressed with the Ubuntu ecosystem.

acabal 15y ago
We're talking about different problems. Windows does not have the problem I'm describing. If I want to update Firefox on Windows XP, I can do that without Windows forcing me to update to Windows 7 as part of the deal. That's the problem. Updating Firefox on Ubuntu 11.04 after a certain (very soon in the future) point in time necessitates an update to Ubuntu XX.YY. In fact you're precisely illustrating my point with your example. That people can choose to stick to XP because they don't like 7 is precisely analogous to wanting to stick with Gnome 2 because I dislike Unity. But the difference is that I can do that in Windows because I can still get app updates in XP for over a decade, but I can't in Linux because app updates are tied to the entire massive distro and everything else that goes with it... often every 6 months. It certainly is possible to upgrade parts of the system using esoteric (to the average-Joe) solutions like PPAs or compiling from source or being forced to switch to a different desktop environment. (Most users don't even know what a DE is!) But the fact that you're forced to turn to such solutions is what I--and the OP and the linked article--argue is the biggest nail in the desktop Linux coffin.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- luser001 15y ago
  > If I want to update Firefox on Windows XP, I can do that without Windows forcing me to update to Windows 7 ... Updating Firefox on Ubuntu 11.04 after a certain (very soon in the future) point in time necessitates an update to Ubuntu XX.YY. I'm not 100% sure about it. As it happens I run both Ubuntu 10.10 (at work) and Ubuntu 11.10. I just saw an alert to upgrade my 10.10 Ubuntu to Firefox 11. I give them major props for keeping an major package like Firefox updated. They probably don't do this for other packages. Now wrt app updates, people have pointed out downthread that PPAs can be added to the system by clicking a specially-encoded URL in Firefox). People on Windows also do things like download the file, locate it, double click, respond to a UAC prompt etc. So installing through PPA isn't that much more complicated. IMHO. Also Ubuntu has a software store, to which developers are free to push their updates. In summary, what people are wishing for in this thread is to have the 3-4 apps they use upgraded to the latest and greatest versions while leaving the core OS and other apps at baseline versions. But ... the solution of using PPA (analogous to downloading the app in Windows) is deemed too nerdy ... Leading to the conclusion that the distro should take responsibility for maintain all the 10s of 1000s of packages for ~10 years. Am I understanding you correctly? Probably ain't gonna happen. Do you really think it would be a step forward if we got rid of the huge number of non-core packages in distros and had to hunt down PPA sources (again, equivalent to downloading apps from different websites in Windows) for each program. I'm not sure. Continuing, I'm not sure the lack of updates for old releases is only a technical problem: XP has an installed base, so people jump through ALL kinds of hoops to make their programs work there. IIRC, there are major differences in audio/video/drivers between Win7 and XP, but people (e.g., Flash/Chrome) still do it. I doubt developers will keep their apps updated and working on XP if it didn't have such a large installed base. End long reply. :)

wmf 15y ago

The entire concept of a milestone-based monolithic distro is so broken for desktop use that I can't believe a better alternative hasn't been developed yet. I feel like even the original 1984 Macintosh was a better alternative. Each app is contained in one file; it has no dependencies other than the OS. There is no need for installers/uninstallers. For updates, even Sparkle (annoying as it is) at least doesn't disrupt your whole system. There are Linux distros that try to work this way, but the upstream developers have become lazy; they expect distros to do packaging for them. This leads to some skewed incentives; I think everything works better when the developer is also responsible for packaging, marketing, and support.