Im not sure the software center being half baked is even the real problem.
One of the nice things about Windows is that you dont need a central, curated, repository for software. You can google the thing you want and just download an msi/exe of the latest stable version and, 99.9% of the time, leading back to your first point, it will just work.
Why do you think its bad? From a secruity standpoint its obviously not great, but its undeniably more convenient than running a curl command to pull in a third party .repo file, yum update and yum install to get something that isnt easily available in my base repos.
Flatpak and AppImage are trying to make that easier, since they both work the same on pretty much any distro, but not everything is packaged that way yet.
Flatpak is closer to the typical package manager model, where you install things from a graphical store or the command line, while AppImages are self-contained binaries that you download from the developer and run as-is without installing.
Snaps also exist, but they don’t work well outside of Ubuntu and its descendants…
I think if they were categories instead of reverse domain names, it would at least be easier to remember. As it is now they’re mostly just meaningless, and I think it would be better if you could refer to apps with only the last part as long as it wouldn’t create a name collision.
Nothing more convenient then a central “app store”. apt search, apt install is all I need. But I undersntd that people don’t like it, that don’t know it.
What’s convenient about googling for software, downloading ominous files and clicking through an install wizard and most likely installing some adware and unwanted search bars? It’s crazy people see it like that.
Even the other posters in this thread are talking about flatpak and appimage. I’ll never understand that way of thought.
The point Im trying to make is package managers are better suited for developers and the lack of a great alternative for installing software on the distros I’ve used is not helping with the mass appeal of Linux.
I could be wrong here as I’ve never tried any of the “home computer” distros (mint, ubuntu).
That’s a pretty bad point you made there. Imagine having to google for each app on your smartphone and tell me how that’s better.
What about the scammy search results that point to malware infected sites?
What about stability and security updates for the software you obtained that way? Every software will have it’s own update mechanism, if there’s one at all.
How is it not better to install or update all software on the computer with a single click or command?
Yeah, the descriptions and lack of curation is really weird … browse games and oh look here’s 27 varieties of reversi and a driving game that crashes on launch.
If it were a curated list with enthusiastic and helpful descriptions it would make it more accessible to use. Get the mature and professional looking programs front and center.
Much as I hate to say it, it could do with a makeover from someone with a sense of marketing. (Excuse me for a second, I felt a little nauseous saying that).
I’m sure that’s the case, but the meme is not making fun of typescript, its making fun of his dad: JavaScript, maybe for not comparing to his son: typescript
You’re right about python being the same. Python doesn’t have a mature alternative to Typescript that launches it into having best-in-class type handling.
There’s so much that my C# devs can’t do with its horrible type system that Typescript “just does better”. At compile-time at least.
I used to work on a hybrid typescript/python product (some services js, some TS, some python), and the TS stuff was just faster-running, easier to iterate, and better. And story-point allocations consistently showed that for an excess of 20 devs working on those codebases.
As for pip/easy_install vs npm/yarn/pnpm… I’m curious what you think pip does well that yarn/npm doesn’t? I’ll say in my work experience there’s more/better enterprise private repository/cache support for node modules than for python modules. Using npm security databases alongside “known good versioning” allows a team of even 100 developers to safely add libraries to projects with no fear of falling out of corporate compliance regulations. I’ve never seen that implemented with pip
How so? The companies I worked for were using venv’s but nothing that could help with standards.
Using a private npm repo, I can actually do aninstall of a library I want to use and it’ll refuse to install if that library isn’t already approved for use by the organization, and if it is/does, it will install only the approved version. Further, I still don’t have any of the libraries installed I don’t want (even secure-seeming unnecessary code is a potential risk and unnecessary). The last 2 places I worked that used python used venv’s, but the pip requirements.txt file was still fairly hard to keep regulated.
So let’s say I want to add a library not currently being used in this project, but that might have been approved for another project in another repo? How does pip freeze solve that problem? Do python users endorse a “every single python app in the entire org should use the same requirements.txt” mindset? Or what am I missing?
Are you sure your knowledge of Python’s package management isn’t out of date? easy_install has been deprecated for years. There are a few mechanisms that the Python community now has for dependency management and installation. My favorite solution is Poetry, which like npm maintains a separate dependency (pyproject.toml) and lock (poetry.lock) file.
I didn’t think anyone was using easy_install anymore, but I still see it in docs for stuff.
Poetry looks interesting, but does it support private-only dependencies, where the system will reject a library or version if it has not been previously approved and cached?
Afaik JavaScript only runs in a browser. If you want to make a desktop app your only option is something like electron.
For example, you can’t make the equivalent of a bash script with JS, but it’s trivial with python. I don’t think you can do system calls at all with JS.
The actual answer, there is no reason to switch. The vast majority of users do not care about Linux or why they would want to. For us there are lots of benefits and things we enjoy about getting away from Windows but for them “why?”
I will object on this one. Even if the majority of user does not care about privacy they do care about ransomware , viruses, speed of the system and in my opinion Linux / BSD is secure, fast and speed remains after time not like Windows where I felt that after 6 months I had to reinstall to get a performant system. I guess it is all about convincing your family and friends about those benefits.
Travis used to be brutal about this. Email headlines that were like “Still failing…”, one piled up after another when you were trying to tweak the CI process.
Those towers actually fell because someone used an oven as depicted by the image on the right, those planes are CGI and a corporate cover-up trying to avoid an OSHA fine. So obvious, I can’t believe these sheeple actually fell for the lie. Smh my head… 🙄
It’s actually kind of beautiful because it makes me think of breaking the grid of space to do some kind of faster-than-light travel.
This could be a ripping seam in the fabric of spacetime at the edge of an Alcubierre warp bubble.
Like a “behind the veil” opportunity appearing as a rent in the backdrop of reality, that you could step through. A secret cave entrance opening in a Zelda game. That feeling.
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