3 ms·

Why do Linux distros have different package names?

7 points by FooBarWidget 14y ago

CaioAlonso 14y ago
With a collective market share of 1%, I find it hard to believe that the reason Linux distributions use incompatible package names is to get revenue from usage statistics. Maybe we should use Hanlon's razor here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  I suspect the razor needs an addition "or backwards compatibility". I suspect many of the names remain unchanged from when they were first added to each distro. There could also have been conflicts with similarly named packages at that time, so something pragmatic is chosen. 10 - 20 years later it looks like stupidity.
jlgreco 14y ago
This is just idiotic. Different package naming conventions provide no meaningful lock-in. Certainly it does not force users to use distribution maintained repos; it tends to be trivial to set up your own mirror of official repos.
0x0 14y ago
This whole web page reads like a crazy paranoid snake oil salesman SEO spam landing page. What the hell.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  The rabbit-hole goes deeper... Search for gwan with hnsearch, this guy is the losethos of webservers or something.
  - 0x0 14y ago
    The way he claims that PHK (of Varnish fame) has "difficulties with C and UNIX" on http://gwan.ch/blog/20120413.html http://gwan.ch/blog/20120413.html (but at the same time is apparently unaware of "dpkg -L packagename" to find the files installed by a .deb in http://gwan.ch/blog/20121021.html http://gwan.ch/blog/20121021.html ) is just... jawdropping
  - FooBarWidget 14y ago
    "losethos"? Are you talking about this guy? https://twitter.com/losethos https://twitter.com/losethos
    - 0x0 14y ago
      There was a long thread on Something Awful about this very, uh, "special" operating system written by one lone guy. Looks like it's renamed now: http://www.sparrowos.com/ http://www.sparrowos.com/
      - FooBarWidget 14y ago
        So what is special about losethos? I see it's 64-bit multi-tasking real-mode, and I see he's apparently posted some unpopular opinions on various forums (not sure what his posts are, they've all been deleted), causing him to become banned. Doesn't seem like any big deal to me. According to http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html the author is often ridiculed for his work. I don't think the G-WAN author is in a comparable situation.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        He seems, to a layman untrained in psychology, to be very... unstable. Just for starters, he seems to think that some sort of god talks to him through some sort of "dissociated press" style markov chains, or something. His old HN account: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos His new account: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SparrowOS http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SparrowOS What I mean by comparing this guy to losethos is that his paranoid rantings and delusions of grandeur (ill-considered rants like this one, or rants about conspiracies to explain why his software isn't more widely used, etc) give me serious "danger! stay away!" vibes.

7 points by FooBarWidget 14y ago

With a collective market share of 1%, I find it hard to believe that the reason Linux distributions use incompatible package names is to get revenue from usage statistics. Maybe we should use Hanlon's razor here: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

rogerbinns 14y ago
I suspect the razor needs an addition "or backwards compatibility". I suspect many of the names remain unchanged from when they were first added to each distro. There could also have been conflicts with similarly named packages at that time, so something pragmatic is chosen. 10 - 20 years later it looks like stupidity.

jlgreco 14y ago

This is just idiotic. Different package naming conventions provide no meaningful lock-in. Certainly it does not force users to use distribution maintained repos; it tends to be trivial to set up your own mirror of official repos.

0x0 14y ago

This whole web page reads like a crazy paranoid snake oil salesman SEO spam landing page. What the hell.

jlgreco 14y ago
The rabbit-hole goes deeper... Search for gwan with hnsearch, this guy is the losethos of webservers or something.
- 0x0 14y ago
  The way he claims that PHK (of Varnish fame) has "difficulties with C and UNIX" on http://gwan.ch/blog/20120413.html http://gwan.ch/blog/20120413.html (but at the same time is apparently unaware of "dpkg -L packagename" to find the files installed by a .deb in http://gwan.ch/blog/20121021.html http://gwan.ch/blog/20121021.html ) is just... jawdropping
- FooBarWidget 14y ago
  "losethos"? Are you talking about this guy? https://twitter.com/losethos https://twitter.com/losethos
  - 0x0 14y ago
    There was a long thread on Something Awful about this very, uh, "special" operating system written by one lone guy. Looks like it's renamed now: http://www.sparrowos.com/ http://www.sparrowos.com/
    - FooBarWidget 14y ago
      So what is special about losethos? I see it's 64-bit multi-tasking real-mode, and I see he's apparently posted some unpopular opinions on various forums (not sure what his posts are, they've all been deleted), causing him to become banned. Doesn't seem like any big deal to me. According to http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html the author is often ridiculed for his work. I don't think the G-WAN author is in a comparable situation.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        He seems, to a layman untrained in psychology, to be very... unstable. Just for starters, he seems to think that some sort of god talks to him through some sort of "dissociated press" style markov chains, or something. His old HN account: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=losethos His new account: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SparrowOS http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SparrowOS What I mean by comparing this guy to losethos is that his paranoid rantings and delusions of grandeur (ill-considered rants like this one, or rants about conspiracies to explain why his software isn't more widely used, etc) give me serious "danger! stay away!" vibes.