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Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

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Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#151

Post by wmf »

acabal wrote: post #104
muuh-gnu wrote: post #17

The reason I stopped recommending Linux to "normal users" is _because_ of the concept of distributions. Coupling the updates of single apps with the updates of the whole desktop or framework and libs, is just plain wrong. Having to upgrade the whole distro (including all the other installed apps you dont want to upgrade) just to install a new version of one single app you _want_ to update is a nightmare. Total bullsh…

I've been saying this same thing for years. Package managers are a nice concept in theory, but Linux on the desktop will never, ever succeed until upgrading (for example) Firefox doesn't result in an install of Unity. The entire concept of a milestone-based monolithic distro is so broken for desktop use that I can't believe a better alternative hasn't been developed yet. Even as a Linux nerd I'm constantly faced with…

The entire concept of a milestone-based monolithic distro is so broken for desktop use that I can't believe a better alternative hasn't been developed yet.

I feel like even the original 1984 Macintosh was a better alternative. Each app is contained in one file; it has no dependencies other than the OS. There is no need for installers/uninstallers. For updates, even Sparkle (annoying as it is) at least doesn't disrupt your whole system.

There are Linux distros that try to work this way, but the upstream developers have become lazy; they expect distros to do packaging for them. This leads to some skewed incentives; I think everything works better when the developer is also responsible for packaging, marketing, and support.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#153

Post by wmf »

zalew wrote: post #54
muuh-gnu wrote: post #17

The reason I stopped recommending Linux to "normal users" is _because_ of the concept of distributions. Coupling the updates of single apps with the updates of the whole desktop or framework and libs, is just plain wrong. Having to upgrade the whole distro (including all the other installed apps you dont want to upgrade) just to install a new version of one single app you _want_ to update is a nightmare. Total bullsh…

it's just Ubuntu, not all Linux. unless there are other distros with Unity and 6-month cycles I don't know of.

Fedora is having similar indigestion with the GNOME 3 upgrade, and longer then 6-month cycles are even worse. How would you feel if all the apps on your system were 18 months old and the only way to upgrade them was to upgrade the whole OS? I believe that's called "enterprise Linux".

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#154

Post by flomo »

Drbble wrote: post #140
harshreality wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updates are not invisible by default because the organizations behind the distros can't provide the same level of assurance that Microsoft or Apple can that update X won't break something. Average users should have no say in keeping their apps from getting auto upgraded. Linux distros have to track upstream app releases because if they don't there will be breakage eventually. Some app will require a feature added in…

Perfect username. The problem is that Linux ecosystem doesn't have enough QA backing the amount of new and changing code. The is partly caused by inflated egos of the competing distro teams. Ingo is wrong about freedom. Freedom is the cause if Linux's problem: dev teams are too free to make compatibility breaking changes and too many alternatives in core desktop infrastructure, so QA can't keep up.

No, there are definitely underlying economic motives beyond ideological "freedom". The only way to make money in the Linux Distro world is to sell 'stability' ala RHEL.

That practically requires that the free teaser product be 'unstable' (and therefore undesirable for paying customers). And the easiest way to do that is a top-to-bottom bleeding-edge system rebuild with each new release.

So it's not just a matter of "not enough QA", because there are very real scalability problems with re-QAing everything every six months to ensure that some random library or compiler flag change didn't break something.

Look at Debian for example - they very much get the idea of "freedom", but they also understand software deployment lifecycles and produce a long-term stable version. (One could argue with their management decisions, but the basic idea is correct.)

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#155

Post by flomo »

lubutu wrote: post #77
muuh-gnu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But distros only add ways to get software. Without distros, the way to get software is unbearable for Windows converts, where it is just "click, click, done." > what better way is there to avoid dependency hell? All distros agreeing to ship one specific version of a lib, so that app devs can target that "standard" version instead of daily changing upstream versions. The dependency chaos is a consequence of no distr…

> Without distros, the way to get software is unbearable for Windows converts, where it is just "click, click, done." Sorry, what? On Windows machines, due to the lack of package management, installing software is not a matter of "click, click, done." You have to google the program, navigate to the website's download area, find the right link, download it, execute it. It asks if you're sure it isn't a Trojan or somet…

I think you're conflating two different issues. Poor UX for installing 3rd party software has been solved with things like Steam or the Mac App Store, for example.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#156

Post by HerraBRE »

drdaeman wrote: post #73
HerraBRE wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this at http://pagekite.net - I build both RPMs and DEBs and host my own repos. This works fine for the most part and is relatively easy for technical users to take advantage of. It was a bit of work to get it working (and my packages arguably aren't good enough yet), but it's doable, even for a small shop like ours. The problem is, this is horribly, horribly insecure. If you add my repo to your sources.list, I…

Package managers certainly need improvements. Repositories must declare what packages (or, better, package name prefixes, like `foobar-*`) they intend to host, and package managers must restrict them from installing something not from this list. Then you can, for example, host your own libsqlite3, but it'll be namespaced as foobar-libsqlite3 with some `Duplicated-By: libsqlite3 (tested with >= 3.7.3, [Added after som…

Yes, I do think this could be worked out - the packaging infrastructure we have today is really powerful and could be built upon. No reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater, I just wanted to illustrate some of the obvious drawbacks of the current "state of the art".

I really hope the ideas from the OP get some traction, Ingo makes some very good points which I haven't heard expressed so well before.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#157

Post by neild »

Drbble wrote: post #139
adambyrtek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell this to people who ended up with broken Arch installations after the sudden upgrade to Python 3.x.

That is a case of yet another pair of problems, though: Python is incompatible with itself across versions (understandable, I guess), yet it is hard to run multiple versions side by side (major flaw in Python 3 for reusing the unadorned name Python, instead of making the number part of the name or changing the name of the installed software)

Python 3 does not reuse the unadorned name "python". It installs itself as "python3" by default. The decision to have "python" be Python 3 was solely Arch's.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#158

Post by lubutu »

flomo wrote: post #155
lubutu wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without distros, the way to get software is unbearable for Windows converts, where it is just "click, click, done." Sorry, what? On Windows machines, due to the lack of package management, installing software is not a matter of "click, click, done." You have to google the program, navigate to the website's download area, find the right link, download it, execute it. It asks if you're sure it isn't a Trojan or somet…

I think you're conflating two different issues. Poor UX for installing 3rd party software has been solved with things like Steam or the Mac App Store, for example.

Steam and the App Store are nothing more than proprietary package management systems.

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#159

Post by freshhawk »

DrCatbox wrote: post #108
zalew wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's just Ubuntu, not all Linux. unless there are other distros with Unity and 6-month cycles I don't know of.

ArchLinux suffers from the same problem. I left my cousin with ArchLinux, he liked it alot, so much that he still used it 6 months later. At that time he wanted to install a new program, well, from then on he stopped using arch. Because he had to call me to help him fix his system, issuing the pacman -S programname failed, so he did pacman -Sy followed by pacman -S programname again, and this time his entire system w…

You left your cousin with arch installed but didn't tell him that it's necessary to keep a rolling release distro up to date?

Hell, I have to keep up with the mailing list and the news page on the website just to keep my OS working update to update.

It's worth it for me because of my needs but Arch is very very specifically NOT for the average user.

You basically set your cousin up to fail. And it's not like the branding and messaging isn't clear about any of these things. Why on earth did you pick Arch for this use case?

Re: Ingo Molnar on what ails the Linux desktop

#160

Post by freshhawk »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #22
cs702 wrote: post #2

Molnar's point about the political and procedural difficulties of adding new applications in the official repositories of most distributions is true (although this is changing -- witness Canonical's Ubuntu Software Center, PPAs, and "universe" repositories). But his reasoning breaks down when he says the relative dearth of commercial applications for the Linux Desktop is due to this issue. That's not true. The main r…

> The main reason why OSX/iOS, Android, and Windows attract more commercial developers is because those platforms have a much greater installed base! A few years ago, Linux had a bigger installed base than both iOS and Android. Both of them outran linux with ease.

This is the most incoherent statement in this entire thread full of non-hackers saying "wouldn't it be nice if there weren't dependencies in software?".

The last thing this discussion needs is troll comments.

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