Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Posted Jan 4, 2011 19:48 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333)In reply to: Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-) by yarikoptic
Parent article: Free Software: the road to a Universal bundle, a powerful app store, and world domination (Free Software Magazine)
Most of those arches are not relevant anymore and while I certainly would not begrudge somebody wanting to support a arch as a hobby, it is not really something of value to any end user... especially desktop.
The number of packages that Debian supports now is not very impressive anymore either. When the only counter example people could bring to the table was Windows it was easy to point at the package management and extol it's positive virtues.
However now we have other systems like Android and iOS that combine the distribution creation of software with package management and those systems quickly surpassed Debian. Not only in terms of users, but in packages.
Do you think that 15000 apps is a big thing? Try 200,000 for Android. Android will probably have well over 300,000 apps by years end. And iOS has many more then that.
And, hell, Android is even multi-arch.
The problem here is that the way things now is horribly inefficient. Its slow, it is labor intensive, and is full of a very significant bottlenecks. Instead of one guy packaging firefox and then distributing it, we have 30 guys packaging it. All doing the same work and all independent of one another.
What sense does it make that if I am using Debian I cannot benefit from work being done on Fedora? Must I wait until one of the SPICE developers goes through Debian boot camp for 5 years before I get to use that protocol in Ubuntu? Does a existing Debian developer have to give up supporting Rhythmbox so that he has enough time to support SPICE? Do the Redhat developers working on SPICE already know everything about it and do a good job building it and testing it?
That is insane. Fedora and Debian are almost entirely alike. They use the same source code, same design, etc etc. Almost everything with them is the same.. only a tiny number of differences makes them incompatible with one another.
Nowadays I regularly use software that is not part of Distributions. Usually because the distributions do a worse job then the developers or they are not available.
Some examples are:
* Google Chrome
* Blender 2.5 beta
* PS3 media server
* Subsonic
All that is great software. I download the binaries and they "just work".
I also install a lot of software from Ubuntu PPA's (which are freaking fantastic things to have) and I don't have to worry about recompiling any of that when a dependency is updated. The chances of running into compatibility problems is small and if there is problems it is probably caused by the package management software more then anything else.
There are technical reasons why software needs to always be repackaged. But you know what? I can usually install Fedora packages just fine on Debian if I am willing to pollute my OS with alien software.
Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:02 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link] (4 responses)
PPAs are very much tied in to the existing packaging system, and the fact that you are so happy with them while being so pro app store indicates to me that the package managers that linux has _can_ do the job, if we use them properly.
the PPAs tie in and use the existing ubuntu libraries and dependancies, they _don't_ try to install their own versions of libraries or be stand-alone installs.
it's pretty easy to package something up to be a stand-alone install, but still tie in to a package manager. If you can compile the project statically linked you eliminate almost all dependancies, and you can use something like checkinstall to do 90+% of the work of packaging it for all of the major distros.
Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:26 UTC (Tue)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (2 responses)
No. Because I am complaining about the bad design of distributions, not their use of package management.
Package management is all fine and dandy, but its the subtle differences in distributions and the huge amounts of duplicated effort is that it causes is the problem. Removing barriers between developers and users is something distributions should strive for.
> the PPAs tie in and use the existing ubuntu libraries and dependancies, they _don't_ try to install their own versions of libraries or be stand-alone installs.
Some do.
The advantage of PPA's is that they do not require the developers to go through anything like FTP masters so it is a lot easier to get packages to end users in a fast fashion.
Getting rid of the requirements for Debian or Ubuntu membership and getting rid of ftp masters is a big win and that sort of thing is something all distributions should be aiming for.
> it's pretty easy to package something up to be a stand-alone install, but still tie in to a package manager. If you can compile the project statically linked you eliminate almost all dependancies, and you can use something like checkinstall to do 90+% of the work of packaging it for all of the major distros.
I already install a lot of software that is dynamic AND works just fine across lots of different distributions. Compiling everything to be statically is no more of a solution then requiring every individual to compile their software from scratch.
What I am getting at is that the lack of giving a shit about binary compatibility is a huge liability for Linux systems. Not caring about it, not designing for it, and not taking it into consideration the negative effects this causes the end users and third party developers is the problem. It hurts users and it hurts developers and whether or not the source code for those applications is available is entirely mute.
Distributions should provide packages for core items and the system and should worry about providing reliable set dependences that other developers and users can build off of how ever they see fit. They should care about having packages that install across multiple systems properly.
What constitutes a "core" component and what constitutes the API and such things are questions that need to be answered. Probably modular, but not terribly fine grained.
Distributions should be taking the same approach that Linux kernel developers do and set up a set of boundaries between what they consider to be their job and what they consider to be external interfaces. Only change APIs/ABIs when they have no other choice. Like Linux developers they should have the ability to remain fluid and be able to do what they want with the system in order to improve performance, fix bugs, and improve features.
And like Linux kernel developers they need to keep in mind that binary compatibility and external interfaces should be respected.
Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:45 UTC (Tue)
by yarikoptic (guest, #36795)
[Link]
Posted Jan 4, 2011 20:47 UTC (Tue)
by dlang (guest, #313)
[Link]
the bigger problem is with two things
1. what optional features are enabled in this distro vs the distro that the application developers use
and
2. what other packages are needed (defining the dependancies)
PPAs avoid some of the distro packaging issues, but they don't avoid these two issues.
most people who are advocating the app store approach seem to want it to magically solve these two problems, and the only way to do this is to eliminate depenancies by packaging everything that you depend on with the package.
as for the high number of android apps, if they were really that useful, why hasn't someone created an android emulator that can run on your desktop and use all of them? In my experiance, most of the android and iphone apps are things that on a normal PC you would just have a browser bookmark for. Yes there are many real apps that do not fall into this category, but for every "real" app there are tens to hundreds that are better off as bookmarks.
Posted Jan 6, 2011 13:54 UTC (Thu)
by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
[Link]
And by linking statically you build too large packages, and create incompatililities with the other packages on the system (and security risks). That has too many downsides to be realistic for non-hobby use.
Posted Jan 4, 2011 22:52 UTC (Tue)
by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
[Link]
* Google Chrome
All that is great software. I download the binaries and they "just work"."
You're clearly someone that likes to play around with software. Most of us don't. Most of us just want to tell our OS what software we want installed and trust it'll be there and be installed sanely.
I personally don't want to have to trawl around the web finding and installing the stuff I need and installing it in a way that will likely install its files in weird and wonderful places according to how the author thinks things should be done. I would rather spend that time being productive.
I'll stick with debian thanks. I consider the modern package-managed distro to be a pre-evolution of the app store.
Posted Jan 5, 2011 3:06 UTC (Wed)
by rich0 (guest, #55509)
[Link]
With something like Chrome or Android the core UI is fixed. Apps are much more contained than on a typical linux distro.
You also need to look at value-add distros like Debian. Debian doesn't just provide a bunch of packages - they also provide QA and assurance that you don't need to risk breaking your web app to get a security fix just because upstream stopped releasing updates to the version of your servers/browsers/etc that you are running. One of the things that many distros offer is a fixed major release schedule.
Don't get me wrong - both approaches have pros and cons. I run Gentoo on my server, so it is unlikely that I'll ever be running something packaged by an app distributor...
Posted Jan 5, 2011 6:26 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link]
How may of those are really anything more than specialized viewers of some web content for mobile use? Stuff that on any desktop OS is handled by one app: the web browser.
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
> getting rid of ftp masters is a big win and that sort of thing is
> something all distributions should be aiming for.
ROFL -- must be a quote of the month.
replies could stop here
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
* Blender 2.5 beta
* PS3 media server
* Subsonic
Debian: We do have our "store" but we have the doors guarded ;-)
Do you think that 15000 apps is a big thing? Try 200,000 for Android. Android will probably have well over 300,000 apps by years end. And iOS has many more then that.
Meaningless numbers