Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan [LWN.net]

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 11, 2013 20:03 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Well, GNOME OS is not an actual operating system. It is a codename or idea that GNOME developers will work on lower levels of the stack such as say D-Bus or even the kernel if necessary in-order to get things done as they have done in the past.

So, GNOME will continue to support packages just fine. The pluggable backends just makes it easier to support other mechanisms so that users have several methods to consume software the way they want to.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 11, 2013 22:08 UTC (Mon) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

I am sure all the Gentoo users will still be very excited about packages and the fine-grained control they have. And while the new kernel compiles, they'll twitter about it from their iPhone.

Turns out all the mobile operating systems - get along very fine with a 2 layer deep packaging system: OS and apps. And I think that's exactly what distros should be replaced with, too.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 11, 2013 22:16 UTC (Mon) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]

I agree that a two-level packaging system is probably worth trying on the desktop. But that's not what's being proposed here, and that's not what I'm arguing against. I'm arguing against the OS X-style zero-level packaging system, where you just run shell scripts off Github and install things in /usr/bin using `sudo gem install`. None of the mobile operating systems do that, and for good reason.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 12, 2013 15:44 UTC (Tue) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link]

gnome-software is just a user application to update your system. It's being designed with a pluggable interface so it works equally well on, say, a 100% rpm-based system like Fedora or a yet-to-be-released system using ostree + application bundles. Or even Fedora with both rpms and application bundles.

The idea is that the UI of this new application will present the system to the user as OS + apps, regardless of how that's actually implemented. Whatever plugins are enabled are responsible for how things work but that detail isn't exposed to the user.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 13, 2013 23:18 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> I've heard GNOME say exactly this in 2010, and probably before. It's no more true today than it was then, and the inherent complication of reliable, quality packaging doesn't go away simply because you want it to.

I wish this is what we actually had on Linux.

For example, it would be nice that I could upgrade the versions of the Linux software I use without having to install a new Linux operating system. I understand that occasionally application requirements may necessitate a upgrade to certain system libraries, but this is not what is going on for the most part.

Lack of proper package management is one of the reasons Linux gaming is still a PITA. Although most Linux users may find their desires filled by a proprietary and rather unfortunately heavily-DRM-encumbered system called 'Steam'.

The Game developers are quite content in building and testing their own binaries and need almost zero assistance from distributions other then the distributions not making pathologically bad decisions on how they setup their libraries. Fortunately most of the hair-brained things Linux distributions do can be avoided through a liberal application of bundling of libraries and LD_CONFIG games and scripted launchers.

Unfortunately this is still causes all sorts of heck on users because they have to go and find the games and such on the internet and figure out their idiosyncratic installers to get them to work. There is no standard way to do things so each time you want to install a game or whatever you have to figure it all out all over again.

And again with the lack of standardized management then upgrading most things is a very manual process.

It's 2013 and users still have go through painful dependency resolutions with 32bit binaries on 64bit systems because Linux system architects decided to reject sane and rational solutions like 'fat binaries', or at least providing 32bit support for all 64bit libraries that get installed because of... I really don't understand why.

So hopefully those high quality packages and packaging system comes along sooner then later, because anything Linux distributions do now is blown away by more modern systems. This distribution-specific packaging solutions we currently have now really has put the hurt on users and developer's ability to distribute new and interesting Linux software.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 14, 2013 15:24 UTC (Thu) by dps (subscriber, #5725) [Link]

You *can* upgrade linux without re-installation unlike systems like windows. On debian and derivatives thereof "apt-get upgrade" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" does what you are wanting in a highly automated manner.

Also note that elf symbol version magic makes things liked against older versions of most libraries just work even if the newer version has a different versions of a structure. Library bundling and LD_CONFIG is neither required nor desirable.

There are hair brained aspects of linux but packages are not one of them.

If games can't cope when newer libraries, need LD_CONFIG and are as hard to install as you say then that is an indictment of the quality of their implementation and packaging. I can believe that might be bad due to experience of server vendors' raid controller tools.

If you want a system with security problems that you have to fix multiple times due to multiple copies of vulnerable libraries then you know where to find it.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 14, 2013 17:34 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> You *can* upgrade linux without re-installation unlike systems like windows. On debian and derivatives thereof "apt-get upgrade" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" does what you are wanting in a highly automated manner.
You forgot step 2: "Light up the incense, sacrifice a virgin".

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 14, 2013 20:29 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> You forgot step 2: "Light up the incense, sacrifice a virgin".

Why? Seriously, why the trolling?

The "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" sequence works all around the world without as much as a hitch. People do use it, you know? I, personally, use it every six months without any reinstalls... just "oh, today is precise pangolin day; let's update". No need for incense or virgins.

Works WAAAY more without problems than the "backup; reinstall new version of windows (will reformat); restore; reinstall all your programs (ok, ninite.com helps here); reconfig 90% of your programs (they were expecting the config files to be in the old place anyway).

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 14, 2013 23:11 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I've had many, MANY cases over the years where dist-upgrade broke something in my installation or failed to finish for some reason.

Yes, in _most_ cases it works fine.

> Works WAAAY more without problems than the "backup; reinstall new version of windows (will reformat); restore; reinstall all your programs (ok, ninite.com helps here); reconfig 90% of your programs (they were expecting the config files to be in the old place anyway).
I've upgraded my Win2000 install all the way to Win7. I had to reinstall Windows only to do the switch from x86 to x64 (which is also non-trivial to do on Debian, btw).

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 15, 2013 16:17 UTC (Fri) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]

the switch from x86 to x64 (which is also non-trivial to do on Debian, btw).

FYI, with the new multi-arch support, it's a lot easier. Still not trivial, but I did it without too much trouble on a Ubuntu 12.10 machine. From here:

# dpkg --print-architecture
i386
# dpkg --add-architecture amd64
# dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
amd64
# apt-get update
# apt-get download gcc-4.6-base:amd64 libgcc1:amd64 libc6:amd64 libselinux1:amd64 zlib1g:amd64 libbz2-1.0:amd64 dpkg:amd64
# dpkg -i *.deb
# dpkg --print-architecture
amd64
# dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
i386
If you got this far you are now effectively running amd64, but with mostly i386 packages. You can try to replace them with the corresponding amd64 packages. If that doesn't work (it is expected that not all libraries will be converted to Multiarch in wheezy) simply remove the i386 package and install the amd64 version instead.

It took some finagling, which was mostly just downloading and installing more packages in the same manner as listed above.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 15, 2013 19:04 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

Ok, at this point I will recant and side with Cyberax that probably one or two blood sacrifices will help smooth the process someway. Stereotypically, it shouldn't be THAT difficult finding a virgin or two in the CS departments of the closest uni.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 18, 2013 18:35 UTC (Mon) by oblio (guest, #33465) [Link]

Why upgrade the OS? On Windows you barely need OS upgrades, maybe one every 5-7 years. The OS itself is supported by Microsoft and all important applications still support old Windows versions. Firefox only recently dropped Windows 2000 support (13 year old OS).

On Windows you just upgrade the applications. A much lower risk of hosing the system than upgrading absolutely everything...

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 18, 2013 20:45 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if you only upgrade windows every 5-7 years you will have been taken over by attackers in the meantime.

It's just that microsoft labels the updates differently (ever hear of 'hostfixes' and 'service packs', those are OS upgrades, frequently ones that break your software)

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 18, 2013 21:57 UTC (Mon) by oblio (guest, #33465) [Link]

Service Packs can break software. Hot fixes rarely break any software. In my experience I know only of 2 cases where that happened: the Vsphere client and a custom IIS application. And that's out of hundreds of applications and hundreds of patches.

Meanwhile, please compare the version bumps between 3 different Fedora versions or 3 different Ubuntu versions. Those include tons of bug fixes and tons of new "features". Features I might want or not, features that might change something I do not changed.

Meanwhile, except for service packs, Windows versions do not introduce new functionality during hotfixes. And even base versions are supported for a long time, so you can just apply the hotfixes and ignore the service packs.

From a compatibility point of view, Windows rules supreme. I don't know any desktop OS with this kind of application compatibility.

Hughes: GNOME Software overall plan

Posted Mar 19, 2013 13:48 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> From a compatibility point of view, Windows rules supreme. I don't know any desktop OS with this kind of application compatibility.

BeOS/Haiku? Don't drivers for BeOS still work on Haiku today? Now if you meant "used desktop OS", then I do think I'd have to agree. Though, pre-NT-era apps (particularly games) can no longer work (I have a few laying around), WINE-on-Windows might end up being the best way forward for that compatibility.