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Ubuntu 21.10

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Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#271

Post by the__alchemist »

md8z wrote: post #269
the__alchemist wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do programs installed via installer executables/scripts also contribute to this problem?

If you install them to your home directory, no. If they install to system directories (/usr, /lib, /etc, /var) then they could cause issues. I personally would not run any installer script that asks to use sudo or otherwise give it root permissions, that's a recipe for disaster. If you have to do that, run it in a container.

Regrettably, that's most software! When I start a new OS (Windows or Linux), I have a set of software I want to install. Examples: Firefox, Chrome, VsCode, PyCharm, SOlidWorks, KiCad, Em-Client, CubeIDE, Rust, Python (NOT the old system version), Steam etc. Almost all of them operate outside the package manager with their own installers!

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#272

Post by md8z »

the__alchemist wrote: post #271
md8z wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you install them to your home directory, no. If they install to system directories (/usr, /lib, /etc, /var) then they could cause issues. I personally would not run any installer script that asks to use sudo or otherwise give it root permissions, that's a recipe for disaster. If you have to do that, run it in a container.

Regrettably, that's most software! When I start a new OS (Windows or Linux), I have a set of software I want to install. Examples: Firefox, Chrome, VsCode, PyCharm, SOlidWorks, KiCad, Em-Client, CubeIDE, Rust, Python (NOT the old system version), Steam etc. Almost all of them operate outside the package manager with their own installers!

I'm not sure what you mean, that isn't even most software out of the examples you gave. I think snap and flatpak have almost all of those. For Rust and Python I think you can use rustup and pyenv. All of that would be preferable to using a root installer.

If the only option they have is an installer that runs as root, then the safest way to handle that would be to run it inside a docker container. Those companies should probably not be shipping installers on Linux unless they target very specific distributions and are working closely with them to ensure they don't break the upgrade process, otherwise it's going to cause issues.

Edit: here are the snaps and flatpaks and docker images I could find.

https://snapcraft.io/firefox

https://snapcraft.io/chromium

https://snapcraft.io/code

https://snapcraft.io/pycharm-professional

https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.mozilla.firefox

https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.chromium.Chromium

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.visualstudio.code

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.jetbrains.PyCharm-Profe...

https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.kicad.KiCad

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.valvesoftware.Steam

https://github.com/xanderhendriks/docker-stm32cubeide

AFAIK, Solidworks and eM Client are not available on Linux, but if they were you would probably see them available in one of those forms.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#273

Post by app4soft »

xiaomai wrote: post #156
app4soft wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use AppImage + firejail (optionally, to fully sandbox AppImage)

I want to like AppImage, but it is just unreasonable that there is no built-in way to trivially install a .desktop file for a given AppImage I've downloaded.

> there is no built-in way to trivially install a .desktop file for a given AppImage I've downloaded

Here it is.[0,1]

[0] https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher

[1] https://docs.appimage.org/reference/desktop-integration.html

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#274

Post by eecc »

md8z wrote: post #214
eecc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well: * NetworkManager is a dumpster fire. * Wayland is 10 years in the making and it's still barely out of alpha and still missing crucial features such as fractional and consistent scaling. * Pipewire is a welcome attempt to mitigate another source of grief, Pulse Audio. * Gnome? Lets not get started... Please. RedHat has been a boon to the Linux community but it's lack of - how can I put it tactfully - design tast…

"still missing crucial features such as fractional and consistent scaling" This has very little to do with Wayland and mostly has to do with the apps and the toolkits. I haven't really seen many Linux native apps that are able to function correctly at a non-integer scale. The rendering of these apps may have to be entirely changed and refactored to use floating point instead of integers. That a big thing to ask every…

Ah sorry... so the major issue is not with Wayland itself, but with the major toolkits that in 10+ years haven´t bothered or figured out how to transition away from a rasterized buffer model.

Right. It doesn't matter if the fault is with GTK, Qt or the Wayland APIs not providing enough support for this to happen, sometime in the last 10 years. The problem is that it didn't.

In the meantime I've been using MacOS that has been doing vector graphics since what? 15 years?

SMH...

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#275

Post by mixmastamyk »

pxc wrote: post #206
mixmastamyk wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with snap is not the software selection, but how obnoxious it is on the system.

Can you explain that a bit?

I've written this comment several times, but it basically spams your system folders, mounts, daemons, and more. Integration is clumsy and poor. It doesn't give much ability to configure it either. Canonical just doesn't have the human-enginering chops/resources to polish all the rough edges. Sorta reminds me of docker, good ideas, middle-brow execution.

Add in poor startup performance, and I removed it. Replaced Chromium snap with a PPA, which was faster and 10x less intrusive.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#276

Post by mixmastamyk »

Chyzwar wrote: post #233
mixmastamyk wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with snap is not the software selection, but how obnoxious it is on the system.

If you want to solve security, portability, and distribution in proper way, you will end with something similar. Security: Snap are running in sandbox by default and have proper support for system permissions. They are installed in user home directory. There is central store that allow for reporting and regularly perform security scanning. Portability: Snaps works on most distros. They allow building once and distrib…

Others have met these requirements with better integration, UI, etc. See sibling comment for one.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#277

Post by md8z »

eecc wrote: post #274
md8z wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"still missing crucial features such as fractional and consistent scaling" This has very little to do with Wayland and mostly has to do with the apps and the toolkits. I haven't really seen many Linux native apps that are able to function correctly at a non-integer scale. The rendering of these apps may have to be entirely changed and refactored to use floating point instead of integers. That a big thing to ask every…

Ah sorry... so the major issue is not with Wayland itself, but with the major toolkits that in 10+ years haven´t bothered or figured out how to transition away from a rasterized buffer model. Right. It doesn't matter if the fault is with GTK, Qt or the Wayland APIs not providing enough support for this to happen, sometime in the last 10 years. The problem is that it didn't. In the meantime I've been using MacOS that…

This isn't about vector graphics. There is always going to be a rasterized buffer, that's unavoidable. Even more so as apps are moving to newer rendering APIs like Vulkan and Metal. Apps doing custom rasterization is probably going to get even more common. The real issue there is what scale you do the rasterization at, because some things just cannot be expressed in terms of vectors. I believe Qt does support doing floating point scaling in some cases [1] but I've heard it's really broken because the apps still need to make changes to support it. You can't just take any old Qt app and recompile it with the moral equivalent of "#define int float".

This is also not a matter of "fault", by necessity the majority of the work that needs to be done here in the toolkits and apps. That's just the way it is. It's not that hard to implement this on the server side, you just don't scale that buffer when rendering. MacOS is an not a good example because that also uses an integer scale.

[1] https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/highdpi.html

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#278

Post by the__alchemist »

md8z wrote: post #272
the__alchemist wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regrettably, that's most software! When I start a new OS (Windows or Linux), I have a set of software I want to install. Examples: Firefox, Chrome, VsCode, PyCharm, SOlidWorks, KiCad, Em-Client, CubeIDE, Rust, Python (NOT the old system version), Steam etc. Almost all of them operate outside the package manager with their own installers!

I'm not sure what you mean, that isn't even most software out of the examples you gave. I think snap and flatpak have almost all of those. For Rust and Python I think you can use rustup and pyenv. All of that would be preferable to using a root installer. If the only option they have is an installer that runs as root, then the safest way to handle that would be to run it inside a docker container. Those companies sho…

None of those you linked are recommended on the official websites:

https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install: Curl an .sh

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/about/: Download and install a .deb

Firefox: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-r... - Download a .tar.bz2

VsCode: https://code.visualstudio.com/download - Download a DEB

Pycharm https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/download-thanks.h... - download a .tar.gz2

Python - Install from source or use a 3rd party dep.

https://www.kicad.org/download/ubuntu/ - KiCad is the only exception that wants you to use an official package.\

Docker is a pain to use; it's a crutch used by web devs and Dev-ops for complex business stuff.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#279

Post by pxc »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #275
pxc wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain that a bit?

I've written this comment several times, but it basically spams your system folders, mounts, daemons, and more. Integration is clumsy and poor. It doesn't give much ability to configure it either. Canonical just doesn't have the human-enginering chops/resources to polish all the rough edges. Sorta reminds me of docker, good ideas, middle-brow execution. Add in poor startup performance, and I removed it. Replaced Chro…

It's been a while since I evaluated them all since I'm a Nix user so my portability needs are met already, and it seems like the sandboxing stuff is still getting worked out, but my impression the last time I looked was that Flatpak was better thought out.

The mountpoints thing seems very minor and cosmetic to me, though.

I guess it sucks to be surprised by something that's only kind of okay.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#280

Post by mdp2021 »

md8z wrote: post #268
mdp2021 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a feature is only used effectively by a small handful of users We do automated computing to have tools in general, as we may need them; and we use special features when we need them. Figure imagemagick discriminating options or functions the same way ("Lanczos stays in, but we could ditch Hamming").

Those special features all have a maintenance cost, and if no one is around to pay it then their usefulness will diminish until they reach the threshold where it's not worth it anymore. Not sure why any filtering algorithm would be considered out of the ordinary. Do you know how many scientific and mathematics packages I've seen that are are really old, outdated, and suffering bitrot? Quite a few. In fact that seems…

Then some mechanism of deprecation could be immensely better than removal (in software with tolerance - an image viewer or an audio editor are not the same as medical equipment firmware or banking software). It could also encourage the interested to review and update the code in case of need.

Some pieces of software are more free to grow, their value is in options (image processing), while others have value in their reliability (banking).

This said, one phenomenon that appeared in the "unfortunate decade" and which is extremely dubious is that of the propaganda that "less is more". No it is not. Freedom is "more". Constraints are "less". (In the general reality of desktop software applications.)

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