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If Linux on the desktop were to get popular, I'd hate to imagine what might happen to the open source Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu repositories. Nothing. In case y

If Linux on the desktop were to get popular, I'd hate to imagine what might happen to the open source Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu repositories. Nothing. In case you haven't been paying attention, Debian repositories were "app stores" before there were app stores. The software goes through extensive vetting and rigorous testing; no, I'm not saying every line of code is inspected, but to claim that a Debian maintainer would just blithely let crapware in is ignorant. As for the walled gardens of Google and Apple, people are objecting to precisely that: the locked in, tinker-hostile way that the platform (not the app store) is managed. It's great that Google and Apple have finally seen the light and started curating software and making it easy to install, like it's been in Debian for nearly two decades. What's not great is telling people what they are and are not allowed to do with their property by anti-competitively denying the right the to install third party apps.

cgh 14y ago
You can install whatever 3rd party software you want on a Mac, side by side with software from the App Store. Note that this article is about PCs, not mobile. You seem to be conflating the two.
- loxs 14y ago
  I don't see a really big difference between a PC and a phone. Don't see why one should be a walled garden and the other not.
- npsimons 14y ago
  Name Google's PC. The article may be about PCs, but the thread definitely devolved to talking about Android and iOS, and it's already been conceded that iOS doesn't allow third party apps. If I didn't know better, I might think you were trying to steer criticism away from Apple . . .
  - desas 14y ago
    You mean the chromebook?
binarycrusader 14y ago
...through extensive vetting and rigorous testing... I wanted to upvote your comment, but then I almost died laughing when I read that. Most Linux distributions are better about it now than they were many years ago, but I still remember being absolutely floored when RedHat had packaged a Perl module with a syntax error some years ago. Same goes for Debian; some of the more "fringe packages" (those of upstream projects that haven't been updated in a while) tended to rot (compilation option changes to dependencies that silently broke parts of the program), and packages from upstream projects that changed rapidly tended to have dependency issues. I'd also like to point out that while Debian may have had "app stores" before anyone else so to speak. The implementation left much to be desired compared to today. Today a user simply selects an application and it gets installed. There's no prompts about whether I want the 37 additional dependencies, no text-based prompts about the configuration of some obscure package, and certainly the presentation was sorely lacking. So yes, Debian may have had the concept early on, but as usual, Apple made something only a geek could love into something usable by everyone.
- jey 14y ago
  Usually there's a few tiers of packages, with the first tier packages being extensively tested and maintained, and the second tier packages mostly just provided as a convenience. I believe Debian calls the first-tier "main" and the second-tier "contrib" (and Ubuntu calls them "main" and "universe").
  - binarycrusader 14y ago
    Yep, I'm aware of that. Although not every Linux distribution makes that distinction and the person to whom I replied certainly didn't leave room for that. But in the past, even the packages in the "first tier" were often pretty busted. But even for that tier, Linux distributions are not performing "extensive vetting and rigorous testing". They don't generally test beyond relying that other components that use it work as expected, and for many components, those are only as well tested as the tests that are included with the component. Yes, some distributions do run security analysis tools or other things on the components they integrate, but that still doesn't count as "extensive vetting and rigorous testing".

cgh 14y ago

You can install whatever 3rd party software you want on a Mac, side by side with software from the App Store. Note that this article is about PCs, not mobile. You seem to be conflating the two.

loxs 14y ago
I don't see a really big difference between a PC and a phone. Don't see why one should be a walled garden and the other not.
npsimons 14y ago
Name Google's PC. The article may be about PCs, but the thread definitely devolved to talking about Android and iOS, and it's already been conceded that iOS doesn't allow third party apps. If I didn't know better, I might think you were trying to steer criticism away from Apple . . .
- desas 14y ago
  You mean the chromebook?

binarycrusader 14y ago

...through extensive vetting and rigorous testing... I wanted to upvote your comment, but then I almost died laughing when I read that. Most Linux distributions are better about it now than they were many years ago, but I still remember being absolutely floored when RedHat had packaged a Perl module with a syntax error some years ago. Same goes for Debian; some of the more "fringe packages" (those of upstream projects that haven't been updated in a while) tended to rot (compilation option changes to dependencies that silently broke parts of the program), and packages from upstream projects that changed rapidly tended to have dependency issues. I'd also like to point out that while Debian may have had "app stores" before anyone else so to speak. The implementation left much to be desired compared to today. Today a user simply selects an application and it gets installed. There's no prompts about whether I want the 37 additional dependencies, no text-based prompts about the configuration of some obscure package, and certainly the presentation was sorely lacking. So yes, Debian may have had the concept early on, but as usual, Apple made something only a geek could love into something usable by everyone.

jey 14y ago
Usually there's a few tiers of packages, with the first tier packages being extensively tested and maintained, and the second tier packages mostly just provided as a convenience. I believe Debian calls the first-tier "main" and the second-tier "contrib" (and Ubuntu calls them "main" and "universe").
- binarycrusader 14y ago
  Yep, I'm aware of that. Although not every Linux distribution makes that distinction and the person to whom I replied certainly didn't leave room for that. But in the past, even the packages in the "first tier" were often pretty busted. But even for that tier, Linux distributions are not performing "extensive vetting and rigorous testing". They don't generally test beyond relying that other components that use it work as expected, and for many components, those are only as well tested as the tests that are included with the component. Yes, some distributions do run security analysis tools or other things on the components they integrate, but that still doesn't count as "extensive vetting and rigorous testing".