KubeRoot

Why does every distro need yet another package manager?

I think most package managers - the ones actually part of a distro - are old. It’s not a question of why they all use different package managers, it’s a matter of them having developed them long ago before any single one matured.

That said, there are other considerations, which is also where new ones come from - different distros will have different approaches to package formats, dependency management, tracking of installed packages and system files, some might be implemented in a specific language due to the distro’s ideology, some might work in a different way (like NixOS), and there’s probably a whole bunch that just want a different interface.

You wouldn’t ask why Linux has a different way of viewing installed programs from Windows, and in the same vein packages are not a universal aspect of Linux, so each distro has to make its own choices.

Also I like pacman, some people complain about the commands being obscure, but I feel like they’re structured in a much more logical way. Don’t confuse it with yay though, pacman doesn’t build packages, and yay is specifically a wrapper around pacman that has different commands, while adding the ability to interact with the AUR.

That makes sense, thanks for explaining! I saw “makes space” as what’s happening right now, since Android does let you install alternatives for all those, including third party app stores, but it does go farther than that.

I don’t think anything you said makes it not free, as long as you can fork it. The same can be said about most FOSS, since somebody, usually the creator, is in control of the repository.

That’s the point of FOSS - your repository isn’t becoming a democracy by virtue of using a permissive license, but it means somebody could outcompete you with a fork and effectively take over as the dominant project.

But… Aren’t all of those things still very much dominant?

The 8 dependencies must be an optional dependency for some other package you already have installed. That said, that kind of stuff is the main reason I want to try NixOS - any time I install something, configure something, etc. I’m risking forgetting about it and getting tripped up over it down the line, with no good way to check.

Considering they supposedly cited performance as a reason, they might’ve been about to pull a Cities skylines 2 indeed

Everyone being equally miserable could be preferable to some people being happy, since it gives everybody equal reasons to work towards improving the situation… Except, of course, the monkey paw would ensure that wouldn’t pan out

I mean, couldn’t an addon just read the password you put into a login field, or send in a request, and send it off to their servers?

Man, and here I put too much effort writing a reply to a troll 😔

Does windows come preinstalled and preconfigured with more potentially vulnerable software on open ports?

I personally don’t value an antivirus that much, since it can only protect you from known threats, and even then, it only matters when you’re already getting compromised - but fair point for Windows, I suspect most distros come without antivirus preinstalled and preconfigured.

A firewall, on the other hand, only has value if you already have insecure services listening on your system - and I’m pretty sure on Windows those services aren’t gonna be blocked by the default settings. All that said though… Most Linux distros come with a firewall, something like iptables or firewalld, though not sure which ones would have it preconfigured for blocking connections by default.

So while I would dispute both of those points as not being that notable, I feel like other arguments in favor of Linux still stand, like reduced surface area, simpler kernel code, open and auditable source.

One big issue with Linux security for consumers (which I have to assume is what you’re talking about, since on the server side a sysadmin will want to configure any antivirus and firewall anyways) could be that different distributions will have different configurations - both for security and for preference-based things like desktop environments. This does unfortunately mean that users could find themselves installing less secure distros without realizing it, choosing them for their looks/usage patterns.

Question, how is Linux more insecure out of the box?

Hold up, how is proton leveraging open source to avoid dev costs? Are you referring to steam using and contributing to existing projects instead of reinventing the wheel? Or to game developers that use it as a reason for not making native Linux versions, which wouldn’t be Valve’s workforce in the first place?

I can see how the things Valve does contribute to their business model - steam input giving their controller compatibility with games, proton letting them launch a Linux-based handheld, and the new recording feature probably there for the steam deck… But the thing is, Valve is still providing all those things to customers for no extra charge, and they keep adding new stuff.

Windows 10. The reason I switched was pretty funny - I had previously bought a cheap SSD and moved my install over to it, and installed Arch on my HDD hoping to experiment with it.

I never really did that, but one day before Christmas my computer booted straight to Arch to my confusion, and after a while I figured out my SSD failed. I ended up installing gnome to have something to use in the meanwhile, since I wasn’t gonna be buying a new SSD in the next few days, but then I just decided to stick with Linux. As I learned more about it I realised I was barely missing anything, and I preferred Linux for what I had.

I think you’re actually agreeing with me here. I was disputing the claim that software should be made available in “a native package format”, and my counterpoint is that devs shouldn’t be packaging things for distros, and instead providing source code with build instructions, alongside whatever builds they can comfortably provide - primarily flatpak and appimage, in my example.

I don’t use flatpak, and I prefer to use packages with my distro’s package manager, but I definitely can’t expect every package to be available in that format. Flatpak and appimage, to my knowledge, are designed to be distro-agnostic and easily distributed by the software developer, so they’re probably the best options - flatpak better for long-term use, appimage usable for quickly trying out software or one-off utilities.

As for tar.gz, these days software tends to be made available on GitHub and similar platforms, where you can fetch the source from git by commit, and releases also have autogenerated source downloads. Makefiles/automake isn’t a reasonable expectation these days, with a plethora of languages and build toolchains, but good, clear instructions are definitely something to include.

The responsibility to figure out the dependencies and packaging for distros, and then maintain those going forwards, should not be placed on the developer. If a developer wants to do that, then that’s fine - but if a developer just wants to provide source with solid build instructions, and then provide a flatpak, maybe an appimage, then that’s also perfectly fine.

In a sense, developers shouldn’t even be trusted to manage packaging for distributions - it’s usually not their area of expertise, maintainers of specific distributions will usually know better.

Sure, you can probably clone it - I’m not 100% sure, but I think laws protect that as long as it’s private use.

You can also fork it on GitHub, that’s something you agree to in the GitHub ToS - though I think you’re not allowed to push any modifications if the license doesn’t allow it?

Straight up taking the content from GitHub, uploading it to your own servers, and letting people grab a copy from there? That’s redistribution, and is something that needs to be permitted by the license. It doesn’t matter if it’s git or something else, in the end that’s just a way to host potentially copyrighted material.

Though if you have some reference on why this is not the case, I’d love to see it - but I’m not gonna take a claim that “that’s very much a part of most git flows”.

I imagine they made this specifically for Steam Deck, since windows users already have stuff like this built into GPU software. They’d want to offer feature parity on their handheld, so it’ll probably work nicely out of the box.

I do believe it’s illegal if they take a repository with a restrictive license (which includes any repository without a license), and then make it available on their own service. I think China just doesn’t care.

I’m not clear on the details, but I know the constellations are made out of stars, I think planets like mars were thought to be major stars, and I’d think sayings like “the stars aligned” would have roots in astrology…

I will also nitpick and say that they said astrology terms, specifically - if astrology considers constellations to be important, and acknowledges they are made out of stars, I’d imagine stars would be part of the terminology. (Doubly so if I’m correct about astrology having (at least previously) a skewed view on what a star is!)

Well, in this case all of those are astrology too as far as I know, and that might be more fitting for a fantasy world