Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) [LWN.net]

Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)

Posted Jun 10, 2008 17:29 UTC (Tue) by lotzmana (subscriber, #3052)
In reply to: Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net) by drag
Parent article: Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)

> What is there for Linux? No school, no Circuit City will fix your Linux box. There is no
support for it. Most of the software people are familiar with won't run on Linux without
headaches. Businesses have to absorb all the costs of training for Linux. Right now users are
forced to download, install, and maintain a complex OS in a way that they have never been
required to do for Windows. If I go to the local computer shop and show them a Linux system
and ask them to fix it they won't have a clue.

It is very hard, almost impossible, for software vendors to distribute software to users of
Linux OS. Even if software is open source/free, the channel goes only via the update of the
entire distribution. This is not viable. People would wish to download and install programs
about which they read reviews or recommended by friends, and they will fail.

Even a Linux friendly software developer will face unsurmountable obstacles in distributing
his software. Windows has great advantage in this regard.

Downloading and installing programs which are outside the prepackaged depository of the
distribution is virtually impossible for non-programmers. That is a hurdle which doesn't exist
on Windows.

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Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)

Posted Jun 12, 2008 4:07 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

I know you're trolling, but what you're saying is ridiculous.  Have you ever actually tried
this?  On my Ubuntu box, I use FireFox to browse and I find a link to a .deb package.  I click
on it.  I get a dialog box that shows a description of the package, notifies me that it
requires a few extra packages to be installed (with a "Details" button next to it if I want to
learn more about them), and has a big "Install Package" button next to it.  There are extra
tabs if I want more details on who created the package, etc. or a list of the files contained
in the package.

In the case of my test, the program even recognized that there was a newer version of that
same package already available in the default repositories and asked me if I wanted to use
that instead.

If I select install it will ask for my password, then download all the prerequisites and the
package and install them all, no problem.

That's it for a one-off install.

For companies that want to provide ongoing support you just have to add their repository
(fully doable through the GUI as well) and then you'll get automatic updates for those
packages, just like any official repository package.

The reality is that Windows installs can't come close to the ease and efficiency of Linux
installs.  The only problem with Linux installs is that companies aren't making the packages
available in the first place.

Acer likes Linux for laptops (c|net)

Posted Jun 12, 2008 19:12 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]

No offense, but it is you who seems to be trolling. The GP's comment is pretty insightful. 

First of all, what you are describing is incorrect. You cannot install a package  in this way
if it happens to have dependencies which are not in the standard OS repository. Telling your
user to edit /etc/apt/sources.list ... Yeah, good luck with that.

Secondly, have you ever tried to install the same package on Ubuntu *and* Debian ? Or on two
different versions of Ubuntu ? Or on Fedora ? 

And lastly, have you tried to create a binary package for more than one distribution and
version ? Did you test those packages ? On all distributions ?? :-)

There is another aspect to all this which you are also ignoring - users cannot simply go to a
web site (Open Office, or Mozilla, or whatever) and download and install a newer version of
the software. It will conflict with the one in the distributions repository, there will be
problems with upgrades, etc. So, most users are conditioned to ignore newer versions of
software, until their distro packages them. What is worse, their are forced to upgrade their
entire OS, even if they only needed a newer version of one package.

I could go on an on about this for ever. The reality is, for better or worse, it is immensely
easier to distribute software for Windows, despite of "DLL hell".