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Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

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Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#41

Weird windows centric view. There shouldn't even be a question where to put things much less a "wherever you want". Instead you want a sane, sensible standard.

There exists makefiles that don't allow DESTDIR, as in mkdir derp gmake install DESTDIR=$PWD/derp Distribution maintainers have to patch this :(

I'm accustomed to setting this up with `./configure --prefix`.

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#44
post #2

More options, more mess. The user will always do something funky, then don't remember about it and then complain to the software publisher that it's not working correctly

Sorry, but I cannot agree.

>> don't remember about it

If you take your time to manually set any kind of new installation location, I assume you know what you are doing and will obviously remember.

>> complain to the software publisher

Changing the installation location should not break the program and if it does, its obviously a bug, or what are you trying to tell me?

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#45

Firejail on Linux and Sandboxie on Windows means I can let programs install whenever they want, and I always know it'll be inside some other top-level directory I specify. Probably better to not let programs spray all over your filesystem anyway.

Ah yes, because people should be forced to use some random third-party program because developers went out of their way to write their own installer that lacks a feature every standard installer has had since the 1980s.

Making the project work when it's in an arbitrary place isn't always trivial.

The proposed "random third-party program" is effectively an extension to the OS.

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#46

Weird windows centric view. There shouldn't even be a question where to put things much less a "wherever you want". Instead you want a sane, sensible standard.

I would love a sane, sensible standard.

But I also want to be able to decide to not adhere to that standard when it gets in the way. It's my machine, there's no reason why I can't make these decisions myself.

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#47

I agree with the sentiment; I also want to control where things are installed. But the framing of the technical problem here is totally backwards. The operating system or application manager within the operating system (what does flatpak consider itself?) should decide where all application state goes. The application shouldn't ever prompt the user for this, it should just assume a path inside a sandbox. That path in…

But what about for state that the application doesn't really "own"? e.g. I want to open a PDF in an editor. The PDF is in my documents folder, and I don't want to expose all of my documents to the application in its sandbox.

Fine grained access to single files should be given out using a file picker. The application manager passes in a socket to the application sandbox. The application connects to that socket using a known hard-coded path. It sends a message (client->server) over the socket, the listening file picking process opens a new GUI window to prompt the user to select a file. The user picks a file and a file descriptor is sent over the socket to the application (server -> client).

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've literally had someone get upset that I used "they", you can't win with some people.

Perhaps because they is plural. Plural is reserved for the royal family in some cultures.

'They' is also used when gender is unknown and has been for a long, long time.

Person_1: I found this great blogger whose writing I think you'd love.

Person_2: Oh, really?! What do they write about?

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#49

The most annoying instance of this is installers in Windows that just assume you want to go into `C:/Program Files`, which nowadays requires admin to be modified This is very annoying on company machines where you may not have admin, since now there's red tape with your IT because the installer was poorly written. Half the reason I use the WSL is because you at least get "root" on it, so permissions are never an issu…

> This is very annoying It's a feature. You shouldn't be installing software on your work computer. Your IT department should be vetting it, deploying it, and keeping it up-to date for you. Maybe you can tell the difference between report.pdf and report.exe, but too many people can't, so unfortunately we can't let everyone install anything.

> Your IT department should be vetting it, deploying it, and keeping it up-to date for you.

There are not enough IT staff at my organization to do this. They have an approved list of software that may be installed. Some common installations are automated, others are niche-enough that it's DIY.

We don't live in a perfect world where the IT staffing ratio is 1:20 (or whatever arbitrary number you would consider "good"), so this is how my organization does it.

> unfortunately we can't let everyone install anything.

Who is this "we?"

Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?

#50

Weird windows centric view. There shouldn't even be a question where to put things much less a "wherever you want". Instead you want a sane, sensible standard.

You mean how on linux "make install" just installs to whatever directory (/usr/bin/, /usr/local/bin/, /opt/?), and if you want to change it you have to do ./configure --prefix=whatever?
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