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On 07/02/17 15:32, Joseph Bennie via list wrote: > >> On 7 Feb 2017, at 15:09, Simon Waters via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >> wrote: >> >> Stop installing software from random places, that is why Windows >> and Apple are a mess. >> >> Just stick to the distro repos, set it to auto-update, be happy. >> > > thats just the most dumb ass suggestion i've ever heard! whats the > point of an open platform if you constrain yourself to a limited set > of installable packages. Hmm, I'm not so sure there chief - for your average *user* I'd say Simon's advice is pretty solid. It's not what I'd personally do but it is what I do for many of my end-users. Set and forget, what's not to like? If you don't know what you're doing you should probably stay away from anything not in the repos I'd think and for the rest of us, as you say, it's an open platform, so go wild. Not so sure about "limited" package selections either... how many available apps does Debian provide these days, something like 30,000+? That's about 30,000 more than the Windows and Apple repositories after all. Which don't exist! > You might as well admit that installing software on linux was simply > better when we did ./configure; make; make install; after having > downloaded a zip from a newsgroup by bilbo baggins Haha, good times. Yeah, that was not a good way to do things. I still have to do it all the time unfortunately - in 2017 you just add a random "git clone some-random-arse-repo.git" instead and skip the download tar.gz. What progress we have made! > Windows and apples a mess .. sorry but installing apps on both > platforms is charm compared with linux. Not quite sure I agree with you or even understand you quite right here though, apologies. Windows and Apple a mess for installing new apps? Yep, pretty much although the new walled garden AppStores they provide now are at least curated properly, if you like that sort of thing (I don't, but end users seem to). Linux systems come with gigantic repos and their own highly sophisticated package managers so I'm not sure what the imagined problem is there. And of course, all three systems will let you hunt down random packages or even source code from the internet at large and perform manual installs if you must. Well, Apple won't until you disable Gatekeeper but that's another story. > flat pack feels like a common sense approach for user space apps. > repos are prefect for core libs and frameworks , drivers etc .... but > its clear that while distro packaged apps are easier , they dont > actually work for the majority of app distributers. so it better to > have a 2 pronged solution. > > packages where apps are very distro specific, and flatpack for apps > that need specifics. I'm going to have to disagree with you here I'm afraid. I'd like to be wrong, but if we revist this same conversation in five years I'm willing to bet that snapd packages and flatpak will have gone exactly the same way as every other distro-agnostic packaging tool that has ever come before, and there have been a lot of them too. I.e., they will be dead, and good riddance. We've both joked about it but the only truly distro-agnostic installer there has ever been and possibly will be for many years is the venerable, dreaded source.tar.gz. It will certainly outlive us all. Cheers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq