Or she.
They is the way
I've literally had someone get upset that I used "they", you can't win with some people.
Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
21–30 of 82 posts
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#22I 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 inside the sandbox will get mapped to where-ever outside the sandbox, and that's where the user exercises control.
We already see this pattern emerging with docker images. Everything assumes `/data` is a good place to store things, and `/config` is a good place to read configuration from. I want every application to do this. If I want it to store state, then I'll decide to map those to directories that are persisted.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#23Firejail 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.
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Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#24Can you be more specific about which platform you're talking about? On a Mac, I've never wanted an application to go anywhere but the default /Applications. I don't ever recall being asked if I want another location, nor would I want to be. Is it different on Windows or Linux? And why would you want a different install location?
On any platforms that allows choice of installation location. There could be a multitude of reasons from control to organisation to disk usage.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#25The 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…
The other choice that some developers decide upon for 'convenience' is within appdata, so admin isn't as much of an issue if at all.
On Windows, I'd classify the "where all has this thing put my data?" problem as worse than the "just assume C:/Program Files" installers.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#26As long as the uninstaller can find it
Well the problem with that is that the past few generations of laptops have taken a page from chromebooks and only give you 128GB of storage, maybe 256GB if you're lucky, unless you add more, assuming that's even possible. Storage has never been cheaper, yet most laptops ship with barely enough storage for a base Windows install.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#27The 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.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#28I 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…
100% agree with this.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#29It really depends on the system. In Linux for example it is pretty conventional to ask. But, the asking is often done by querying some environment variables.
If a program prompts the user for a directory instead of querying the appropriate environment variable, that is a violation of the stated user preference.
Re: Can we talk about the rude installers not asking for installation locations?
#30I am really more annoyed about config files that are cluttering up everything. Even resolve and other big packages started to clutter the Documents folder on Linux.