Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thank you, Ubuntu

psung.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 133 posts

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#61

Post by spacemanaki »

thristian wrote: post #33
spacemanaki wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your suggestion of "package it into your app/lib yourself". Are you suggesting manually installing stuff that isn't available from Macports or Fink? Or something else? For the record I'm pretty green when it comes to Unix sysadmin stuff so go easy... I'm genuinely interested - I'm a new Mac user who came from Linux and my biggest issue on the Mac so far is that package management isn't as good a…

For what it's worth, I'm an ex-Mac user who went back to Linux because I missed apt. Of course, I do a lot of hobby programming and general messing around with open-source software; if your use-cases tend more towards pre-packaged software, you might get on perfectly well.

I definitely haven't written off switching back to Linux - if I ever do it will probably be because of apt (and maybe xmonad). For now, installing the vanilla versions of stuff like ruby 1.9, SBCL, mit-scheme from Macports, and pre-packaged versions of MacVim and emacs are working for me but that may not always be the case...

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#62

Post by spacemanaki »

bravo_sierra wrote: post #48
spacemanaki wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your suggestion of "package it into your app/lib yourself". Are you suggesting manually installing stuff that isn't available from Macports or Fink? Or something else? For the record I'm pretty green when it comes to Unix sysadmin stuff so go easy... I'm genuinely interested - I'm a new Mac user who came from Linux and my biggest issue on the Mac so far is that package management isn't as good a…

MacPorts can be hard to grep if you haven't used a BSD before (not that it's great anyway), and Fink is a bit more painful than apt et al. If you're on OSX, the ace up it's sleeve is Homebrew[1]. Definitely the easiest package management system anywhere. [1]: http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew

I'd forgotten about Homebrew but found it again when I went hunting for the earlier discussion on HN... I'll definitely be checking it out soon, thanks.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#63

Post by MisterWebz »

rwl wrote: post #45
MisterWebz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, i might have unnecessarily blamed Ubuntu, but it's still a problem that needs to be fixed. And as long as that problem exists, i won't recommend Ubuntu to the average computer user.

Why? The "average computer user" is precisely the kind of person who is likely to have commodity hardware that is supported by Ubuntu. Would you not recommend it because you can't guarantee that Ubuntu will work with all her hardware? If that's the problem, then what would you recommend? Can you guarantee that some other OS supports every piece of hardware she owns? Or are you holding Ubuntu to a higher standard? If…

Because the average user just wants his computer to work, he doesn't want to try something unfamiliar and risk doing even more work to get the computer working. Maybe we don't have the same definition for "average user".

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#64

Post by fauigerzigerk »

IgorPartola wrote: post #17

I keep try to evangelize the fact that things like apt are one of the biggest wins for the various UNIX-like OS's. In Windows world installing software takes both finding it and configuring the installer. On a Mac you have to at least find it. On Ubuntu/Debian/etc you just have to know the name (or you can search a central database). Also no more Java/Flash player/Acrobat Reader "needs to be updated" messages. You up…

The package manager concept is actually what I hate most about Linux systems and Ubuntu's strategy to not let you upgrade some packages without upgrading the OS itself is insane.

Packages tend to thrust some completely idiosyncratic configuration scheme down my throat that is documented nowhere and that creates conflicts of its own. They don't just solve dependencies they encourage dependencies because they are supposed to be resolved automatically anyway. But they're not. Things break all the time. The Linux dependency hell has far surpassed the infamous Windows DLL hell of the 90s.

I was called to help people fix their Ubuntu installation after some package upgrade had uninstalled half the system. I had an upgrade replace a working but proprietary wifi driver with a non functional "free" one, etc, etc.

Most of the problems I ever had with Ubuntu were caused by that completely broken package management idea. If I want Python 2 and 3 on the same system I can't have a package manager tell me that's not supposed to be when I know full well that it's no problem.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#65

Post by jfb »

spacemanaki wrote: post #28
demallien wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, until the repository maintainers mess up, create two packages that are in conflict, and yet both installed on your system, and now every attempt to update your software fails because you have out-of-date dependencies that can't be updated due to the conflict. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit bitter about my fedora install at the moment :) That said, I think you overestimate the delta between OSX and the va…

I'm not sure I follow your suggestion of "package it into your app/lib yourself". Are you suggesting manually installing stuff that isn't available from Macports or Fink? Or something else? For the record I'm pretty green when it comes to Unix sysadmin stuff so go easy... I'm genuinely interested - I'm a new Mac user who came from Linux and my biggest issue on the Mac so far is that package management isn't as good a…

Homebrew is the best, but I always end up building everything I need from scratch, because I'm paranoid that some idiot package maintainer will require some tiny library that will necessitate building and installing X11, which software is largely the reason I use a goddamn Macintosh in the first place.

Also, Interface Builder.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#66

Post by _delirium »

thristian wrote: post #33
spacemanaki wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow your suggestion of "package it into your app/lib yourself". Are you suggesting manually installing stuff that isn't available from Macports or Fink? Or something else? For the record I'm pretty green when it comes to Unix sysadmin stuff so go easy... I'm genuinely interested - I'm a new Mac user who came from Linux and my biggest issue on the Mac so far is that package management isn't as good a…

For what it's worth, I'm an ex-Mac user who went back to Linux because I missed apt. Of course, I do a lot of hobby programming and general messing around with open-source software; if your use-cases tend more towards pre-packaged software, you might get on perfectly well.

I do sort of both by running Debian inside Virtualbox on my Macbook as a dev environment. I especially like being able to install -dev packages to get header files/libraries into the right places, whereas on OSX, if you want to compile software that depends on anything that didn't come with XCode, it's a mess of manually extracting things and passing pathnames.

I don't go the whole way and just install Debian on the machine mostly because having OSX handle things like the touchpad driver, hibernation, wifi, etc., is less hassle, and I also like OSX as a desktop environment (e.g. being able to use multitouch gestures in the browser). But Linux in a VM is definitely a nicer experience imo than fink was, as a way of getting a parallel Unix CLI userland onto OSX.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#67

Post by _delirium »

sprout wrote: post #44
Andys wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Its since 8.04 and onwards that upgrades STOPPED breaking things for me. Its been a golden era for Ubuntu.

It seems like since 8.04 they've changed the package naming conventions for LaTeX twice. That's been the biggest pain about upgrading for me, everything else has been a breeze.

I think they inherited that transition from Debian, where it's also been a bit of a pain. Part of the mess is that it wasn't just repackaging/renaming, but a switch of upstream sources too, which weren't exact drop-in replacements for each other--- teTeX hasn't been actively maintained since 2006, so Debian (and most other distros) shipped to TeX Live as their new upstream.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#68

Post by dkarl »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #64
IgorPartola wrote: post #17

I keep try to evangelize the fact that things like apt are one of the biggest wins for the various UNIX-like OS's. In Windows world installing software takes both finding it and configuring the installer. On a Mac you have to at least find it. On Ubuntu/Debian/etc you just have to know the name (or you can search a central database). Also no more Java/Flash player/Acrobat Reader "needs to be updated" messages. You up…

The package manager concept is actually what I hate most about Linux systems and Ubuntu's strategy to not let you upgrade some packages without upgrading the OS itself is insane. Packages tend to thrust some completely idiosyncratic configuration scheme down my throat that is documented nowhere and that creates conflicts of its own. They don't just solve dependencies they encourage dependencies because they are suppo…

They don't just solve dependencies they encourage dependencies

This is a good thing. Developers' attitude toward dependencies gets very lax when it's too much work to declare them or too much work for the user to satisfy them. Then you get into situations where you install a piece of software and 90% of the functionality is broken, because the developer was "considerate" enough not to "force" a bunch of dependencies on you, so you resort to Google to find the real dependencies, which of course aren't available for your distro. Apt gives developers a flexible way to declare different kinds of dependencies, and the Debian and Ubuntu distro repositories give them confidence that the dependencies will install smoothly for users.

I had much more difficulty with undeclared dependencies back in the day than I have with excessive dependencies now. It's just wrong for software to easily install in a mostly broken state. If you want broken, partly-working software, you should have to do extra work to achieve that, not the other way around.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#69

Post by swies »

IgorPartola wrote: post #17

I keep try to evangelize the fact that things like apt are one of the biggest wins for the various UNIX-like OS's. In Windows world installing software takes both finding it and configuring the installer. On a Mac you have to at least find it. On Ubuntu/Debian/etc you just have to know the name (or you can search a central database). Also no more Java/Flash player/Acrobat Reader "needs to be updated" messages. You up…

http://ninite.com is getting close to apt-get for Windows. We're working on a Mac version too.

Things are better on Linux, but not all rosy. Installing Dropbox, for example, is a surprisingly crappy experience (windows popping up, separate proprietary daemon download, etc). That, and way more user requests than you'd imagine, is why we have http://ninite.com/linux now too.

Re: Thank you, Ubuntu

#70

Post by CaseOfEmergency »

billiob wrote: post #50

I'm so sad that so many HNers can not understand what is the real value added by Ubuntu. If more hardware is supported, it's because the kernel tends to get drivers for most hardware nowadays. If apps are getting better, it's not because of Ubuntu, but because of the apps developers. The power of Ubuntu is only on marketting.

I kind of agree with this. The article is not really about Ubuntu, it is about Linux distros in general. I have been using Mandrake/Mandriva for at least eight years. I tried Ubuntu a while ago to see if the buzz was justified. I was unconvinced. The "user-friendliness" was lower than Mandriva. But it seems Mandriva does not have the mind share that Ubuntu seems to have captured.

On the other hand, Ubuntu's success is success for Linux in general, so I have nothing against it. It just surprises me.

Post reply on HN