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> As opposed to Linux which would have issues when running apps side-by-side? The meteoric rise of containers is a massive testament to just how bad Linux is a

> As opposed to Linux which would have issues when running apps side-by-side? The meteoric rise of containers is a massive testament to just how bad Linux is at running apps side-by-side. Or for a more principled approach, take a look at Nix. Either way, the problem is solved by adding quite a lot of complexity. Android and iOS also solve this with a large amount of sandboxing, which means more complexity. Developing and maintaining mobile apps is anything but simple. To be clear, I'm not saying these things are bad. They are necessary. But they are not simple.

chrismorgan 2y ago
Linux is emphatically no worse than Windows at running things side by side. Better in many places. But socially it has a custom of using a package manager for dependencies, where Windows instead requires you to vendor everything, because historically it's just had no package manager story. People sometimes criticise ecosystems like npm and Cargo because you end up with many dependencies. But the alternative was C/C++, where you instead ended up vendoring everything, which has its own problems, and reimplemented things poorly because getting dependencies in is so hard, and that's fairly terrible. I would suggest that actually containerisation was more an opportunity that Linux could avail itself of, since it was a fairly small shift, things were already normally pretty scripted, whereas it has never taken off much on Windows because everything's already too manual, it takes too much effort to shift. The reality is probably a bit of this, a bit of that, but Linux is not at all bad at running things side-by-side, so long as you either commit to using the OS package manager tools, or deliberately avoid it entirely, like you effectively have to on Windows.
- hamandcheese 2y ago
  Nobody is arguing that Linux is bad at running multiple processes at the same time. The whole point is the differences in how people customarily package software for each platform. It turns out that package distributions on Linux are nice if you only consume from the package distribution, but are a huge pain in the ass if you want to deploy software packaged independently (which applies to a large portion of commercial software deployments). For proof of how fucking hard it is to effectively vendor your software dependencies in Linux see: Docker, Nix, AppImage, Flatpack, Snap. It's not hard because of any technical limitation of Linux.
  - bigfatkitten 2y ago
    Packaging is pretty easy if you want to stick to a single ecosystem. If you're a Red Hat shop and you're only interested in deploying your stuff on RHEL, then rpms are easy to build. Use the system deps where appropriate, ship your own when not. The packaging story falls apart when you want to ship software to customers running god-knows-what.

chrismorgan 2y ago

Linux is emphatically no worse than Windows at running things side by side. Better in many places. But socially it has a custom of using a package manager for dependencies, where Windows instead requires you to vendor everything, because historically it's just had no package manager story. People sometimes criticise ecosystems like npm and Cargo because you end up with many dependencies. But the alternative was C/C++, where you instead ended up vendoring everything, which has its own problems, and reimplemented things poorly because getting dependencies in is so hard, and that's fairly terrible. I would suggest that actually containerisation was more an opportunity that Linux could avail itself of, since it was a fairly small shift, things were already normally pretty scripted, whereas it has never taken off much on Windows because everything's already too manual, it takes too much effort to shift. The reality is probably a bit of this, a bit of that, but Linux is not at all bad at running things side-by-side, so long as you either commit to using the OS package manager tools, or deliberately avoid it entirely, like you effectively have to on Windows.

hamandcheese 2y ago
Nobody is arguing that Linux is bad at running multiple processes at the same time. The whole point is the differences in how people customarily package software for each platform. It turns out that package distributions on Linux are nice if you only consume from the package distribution, but are a huge pain in the ass if you want to deploy software packaged independently (which applies to a large portion of commercial software deployments). For proof of how fucking hard it is to effectively vendor your software dependencies in Linux see: Docker, Nix, AppImage, Flatpack, Snap. It's not hard because of any technical limitation of Linux.
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  Packaging is pretty easy if you want to stick to a single ecosystem. If you're a Red Hat shop and you're only interested in deploying your stuff on RHEL, then rpms are easy to build. Use the system deps where appropriate, ship your own when not. The packaging story falls apart when you want to ship software to customers running god-knows-what.