Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised [LWN.net]

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 22, 2016 17:11 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
In reply to: Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised by welinder
Parent article: Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

>For me, the answer is that Linux Mint protects the users against what I will be nice
and call misguided innovation on the desktop. The fads of the day.

Don't see why you need one particular distribution for that. You can very well Cinnamon and Mint in any number of other Linux distributions.

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Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 22, 2016 18:51 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (8 responses)

I agree that creating a boutique distribution in order to circumvent disputes with the Gnome devs over the direction of their software is a waste of resources (ie: time/money/etc), but this isn't a completely irrational decision.

Regardless of what you think about package managers the fact that it's extremely common to create various 'spins' or 'flavors' of this or that Linux distribution should be telling of a fundamental problem with lack of flexibility with Linux systems.

It's a bit of a confusing problem, of course.

The deal is with most operating systems the operating system itself does not promise the ability to support multiple desktop environments. Windows does not support anything beyond a 'classic' theme'd interface versus a new one. It doesn't have 30 different flavors of desktop, even though it's very possible to that in Windows. Similar thing with OS X. This means that Linux distributions have created a significantly higher level of complexity for themselves versus those from other operating systems.

With Linux the distributions promise the ability to let you install whatever desktop environment you want, but they fail to deliver it in a way that is easy for users to deal with. For most users it's easier to install a entire new linux operating system then it is to (say) try out Gnome and then install KDE and try that.

Why do I know this? Because it's exactly what users choose to do. It's just a question of figuring out _why_ this happens.

And it's even deeper then that...

A major part of the 'cinnamon' vs 'mate' vs 'gnome 2' vs 'gnome 3' is that the Gnome devs made it the unfortunate choice of making Gnome 2 and mutually Gnome 3 exclusive. So it was a huge pain in the ass for users to try out Gnome 3 and then go back to Gnome 2 when they realized it was not mature enough for their purposes.

Why did Gnome decide to do this? Well... the general inability for Linux distributions to make it easy to manage software installations and switch environments is a major cause of this.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 22, 2016 19:03 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> the general inability for Linux distributions to make it easy to manage software installations and switch environments is a major cause of this.

Without Linux distributions, Linux is just a kernel and nothing more. Application deployment was limited to ./configure dance cycles for a long time and distributions made it very much easier to install and consume applications very quickly. The world around has changed dramatically since the early days and while distributions have somewhat tried to cope with that, they haven't caught up fast enough. xdg-app and GNOME Software seems pretty promising IMO, incidentally, both of which are very much a distro driven solution to the above mentioned problem.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 2:40 UTC (Tue) by Beolach (guest, #77384) [Link]

I agree that creating a boutique distribution in order to circumvent disputes with the Gnome devs over the direction of their software is a waste of resources (ie: time/money/etc), but this isn't a completely irrational decision.

Linux Mint pre-dates the GNOME 3 kerfuffle by a significant margin. Their original goal, that led to their early popularity growth, was out-of-the-box ease-of-use above all else, including legality. See glaubitz comments in this thread for more detail.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 9:53 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (4 responses)

> A major part of the 'cinnamon' vs 'mate' vs 'gnome 2' vs 'gnome 3' is that the Gnome devs made it the unfortunate choice of making Gnome 2 and mutually Gnome 3
> exclusive. So it was a huge pain in the ass for users to try out Gnome 3 and then go back to Gnome 2 when they realized it was not mature enough for their purposes.

That is a very inaccurate representation. None of the GNOME 2.x versions can be installed at the same time. That has been the case for the entire 2.x. Going to 3.x for loads of components just meant changing the major version from a "2" to a "3". If you couldn't install 2.2 and 2.32 at the same time, changing a major version doesn't make that "suddenly happen".

Saying GNOME made a choice to make it mutually exclusive is therefore incorrect. It wasn't possible, and we didn't do anything to make all the components installable at the same time. But that is vastly different from suggesting that was a choice that it should be this way. One can be used to suggest bad faith. That's not what happened.

This discussion happened in the open on desktop-devel-list whereby it was mentioned it was good to have, but we lacked the development effort and would appreciate people (distributions) to help out. Various distributions were aware of this discussion but didn't have the development resources.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 17:37 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

Impossible? Ha. We're talking about software. Besides, MATE demonstrates otherwise.

It's true that GNOME didn't prioritize allowing 2 and 3 to be installed at the same time. In retrospect, do you suppose this was a mistake? (you know I do of course...)

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 21:17 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (1 responses)

Not sure what you're after. I'm guessing congratulations? Then congratulations for your effort at selectively reading so you could whine about GNOME. For anything else, read my original comment, it already addressed everything.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 23, 2016 21:54 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Talk about selective reading, indeed. You said it was impossible, I said it's just software and MATE proves it's possible. Anything wrong so far?

Then, I followed with a 100% honest question that I have: now, with some hindsight, could things have been done differently? Could things have been better if GNOME had prioritized 2 and 3 being installable in parallel? (my apologies for using the word 'mistake', though I don't see why that word choice shouldn't derail the conversation. hope you accept this slight rewording).

Not sure where you're finding whining and ulterior motives... I'm really not that complex a person.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 24, 2016 1:59 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> Impossible? Ha. We're talking about software. Besides, MATE demonstrates otherwise.

I think the point was that the rest of the GNOME team didn't have the time or inclination to do the work that the MATE team did, not that this work was literally impossible. There is a real question as to whether the GNOME team could have done more to absorb or recruit the new developers who ended up making MATE so that GNOME would have had the resources to ship both versions simultaneously, but there may be more fundamental political disagreement that would prevent this collaboration from happening. There is also the possibility that this couldn't have been done in a non-disruptive fashion because the motivation to maintain GNOME2 wasn't there until distros starting shipping GNOME3 in large numbers to disgruntle enough developers to do the work.

Linux Mint downloads (briefly) compromised

Posted Feb 24, 2016 14:25 UTC (Wed) by sneex (guest, #107267) [Link]

I totally agree but allow me to also add that that if the overall intent of various distributions was unnecessary insanity then that goal is being achieved ... especially with M$ Windows being so pervasive ...