I agree with Linus Torvalds. Linux is too fragmented. This makes consistent software deployment and support expensive and far too varied. Maintaining documentation alone requires an unlimited number of distros. From a user’s perspective, I really think Linux needs a universal install method like .exe. No user should ever need to use the CLI install software, no matter their distribution. Radarr, for example, is a very popular home media server application. It is one-click install on Windows. It is fucked on Linux.
.exe to execute is (probably one of) the worst ideas Microsoft has come up with and has caused endless misery for people.
If you’re talking about a single package to install then there are various solutions for that that are better. There are the apt and rpm packages, Sudo apt install packagename installs everything automatically, or I can do that from a app store if I’m a newbie.
For apps that want a wider net, they can use flatpaks
Anyone complaining that installing software in Linux is always complicated hasn’t installed software on Linux. Yeah I’m a power user but to me it’s factors faster and easier to do this stuff on Linux than on Windows
Yeah, Linux has many ways to get stuff done, that is because many different people want and get their own way. I don’t see this as necessarily bad. With the three ways described above, you can cover pretty much everything
I agree that noone should have to get into a console to get your system or app working but please note that this same shit happens on windows too, just way more bizarre. The amount of times I saw “modify this registry entry with this UUID code” is crazy, while on Linux it’s “run this command or modify that text file”. I still prefer the latter
I don’t understand this “Installing stuff on Linux is complicated :(” meme when the user-friendly distros have “app stores” and the terminal commands for app management are simpler than 80’s text adventure inputs. (Apt / zypper / yum / whatever + search, then install and “Y”. You can even install multiple packages by separating them with spaces! Doesn’t require an MIT degree here…)
And the sheer convenience of one single update process to update all your software on your machine at once! This is literally what mindless-consumption devices like smartphones do, and people seem to like it.
Windows fans need Chocolatey to “mimic a fraction of our power!!”(Lol j/k. meme.) And while it’s cool, I found it more complicated command-wise. (There’s also GUI front ends I think to be fair but I digress.)
On Windows if your app doesn’t auto-update, you’ve gotta download a new .exe, or .msi or .zip (“so many formats! Not simple! :(” heh) for EVERY update.
And lastly, when something goes wrong:
Personal experience here but I’m glad I can run any app in Linux with a terminal window and see some computer-speak as to what went wrong. Even if I don’t understand it, somebody will!
Windows often just tells me “No.” and the only option is: “OK”. Or blue screen errors are purposely obfuscated, and worst case advice is “Hi my name is Josh D. A Microsoft support volunteer. Have you run Windows Update? Updated drivers? Reinstall the whole OS to be sure, I guess.”
I’m sincerely not trying to be smug here. The aversion to the terminal is like 99% psychological. People ideally read manuals to figure out how to use their new air fryer, so I don’t think it’s too outlandish to say “Hey learn a couple simple phrases to install and update your system.”
And that’s even if you need the terminal at all.
So many people are so happy to help if Linux is new and different to you, but I’m so done with people mocking it as “not ready” and “unusable by the average person” because somebody tried installing an .exe in Ubuntu or loading up Gentoo once without reading anything, and ran screaming back to Windows.
Human brains are incredible things. I think we’ve just been stuck in some weird culture that makes learning scary and intimidating because it’s easier to sell us push-button-o-matics (with trackers and ads of course!) that way.
P.S: My entire games library, even my discs Windows won’t even bother with, run beautifully, on Nvidia, using Wayland, with 2 monitors, on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
P.P.S: Also I do plenty of art, sometimes even get paid for it, and hereby proclaim that Adobe, Autodesk, and their ilk can go screw themselves. Great software, but It’s not worth the headaches of user-hostility and gouging subscriptions. I don’t miss them.
Now all we’re missing is the universal enforcement piece, which I think is non-trivial. It might take off organically but as per my example above, I’m not hopeful.
“Universal enforcement” meaning what? On its face your proposal sounds fundamentally antithetical to what linux is. It’s an open source environment, meaning literally anyone can create software and post it online. Are you wanting all directories to only accept flatpak? I don’t think that would go over well.
You highlight the issue: Linux users like it to be fragmented. So unless Valve forces consolidation, it will stay a mess, and it will continue to repel average users. If that’s what we want, cool. Let’s just stop calling every year the year of Linux, because that will never be the case.
Looks like a one click install on nixos - so youre right to say its fucked on Debian, but that hardly represents the whole OS (like my god you want to hate Linux try LFS and claim it represents the OS).
The way I see it the biggest fragmentation is just users expecting things to work like windows, ie navigating to a website, downloading the software and running it.
Usually Linux users just search their package repo. If you want more bleeding edge software, youre expected to understand Debian/Ubuntu repos probably aren’t the place to go.
Can’t really blame the wrench youre using to put in a screw for doing a bad job.
The way I see it the biggest fragmentation is just users expecting things to work like windows, ie navigating to a website, downloading the software and running it.
Usually Linux users just search their package repo. If you want more bleeding edge software, youre expected to understand Debian/Ubuntu repos probably aren’t the place to go.
Like it or not, most users expect to be able to go to a website, download software, and click it to install. It is objectively more intuitive than using a command line, or having users go somewhere else to install software. I don’t see the sense in fighting against user preferences. Embrace it. Offer it. Give the users what they want. That’s how we grow Linux. There is no reason that “bleeding edge” software needs to be complicated to install and use.
I’ll admit Linux users are more allergic to GUI’s than they need to be, but if snowflakeOS becomes more mature then I’d consider an app store much more intuitive and secure than arbitrary full system access.
Cause realistically we could start throwing ads in the system to really make windows users feel at home, but (like the mess that is windows dependencies) tradition can be a weakness more than a strength.
Yeah that’s just radarr devs not actually packaging the thing.
Compare the nixos instructions. Which, mind you, is not a distro for beginners, the faint of heart, or generally people who are neither functional programmers nor devops, but that’s how easy it is when you package shit properly.
Yeah that’s just radarr devs not actually packaging the thing.
It’s not about blame. From a user’s perspective, it doesn’t matter who is to blame. The bottom line is that Linux is harder to use in a lot of scenarios. Torvalds was right: it’s going to take Valve to statically link everything and force developers to use the same libraries. Then it’s trivially easy for devs to maintain a .elf distribution which can be executed across all Valve-compliant Linux distros.
I think youre misrepresenting what Linux is supposed to be, it runs most Walmart displays, kiosks, medical systems, and servers.
Its just now branching into a more usable desktop environment, but its going to do this the right way.
As time as shown is the windows way is incredibly bloated and unstable - I wouldn’t dream of running a critical server off of it, nor even a non-critical one like radarr. Undocumented issues are just part of the game in the windows world.
Taking the easy route will kinda by definition be easier at first.
Though ngl I find it incredibly easier to enter
nix-shell -p radarr
than to navigate to a webpage, download and install an arbitrary executable, give it absolute admin privellages to the ebtirety of my computer to let it ‘do its thing’ for a bit, and be SOL if that doesnt all go perfectly.
That’s not going to work radarr is a daemon. Well at least it’s not going to work as intended, you might be able to start the thing as a user, but it’s likely not what you want to do, you want the thing registered with systemd and start up and shut down with the system. We don’t nix-shell -p sshd either.
I agree with Linus Torvalds. Linux is too fragmented. This makes consistent software deployment and support expensive and far too varied. Maintaining documentation alone requires an unlimited number of distros. From a user’s perspective, I really think Linux needs a universal install method like .exe. No user should ever need to use the CLI install software, no matter their distribution. Radarr, for example, is a very popular home media server application. It is one-click install on Windows. It is fucked on Linux.
Oh hells no
.exe to execute is (probably one of) the worst ideas Microsoft has come up with and has caused endless misery for people.
If you’re talking about a single package to install then there are various solutions for that that are better. There are the apt and rpm packages, Sudo apt install packagename installs everything automatically, or I can do that from a app store if I’m a newbie.
For apps that want a wider net, they can use flatpaks
Anyone complaining that installing software in Linux is always complicated hasn’t installed software on Linux. Yeah I’m a power user but to me it’s factors faster and easier to do this stuff on Linux than on Windows
Yeah, Linux has many ways to get stuff done, that is because many different people want and get their own way. I don’t see this as necessarily bad. With the three ways described above, you can cover pretty much everything
I agree that noone should have to get into a console to get your system or app working but please note that this same shit happens on windows too, just way more bizarre. The amount of times I saw “modify this registry entry with this UUID code” is crazy, while on Linux it’s “run this command or modify that text file”. I still prefer the latter
100%
I don’t understand this “Installing stuff on Linux is complicated :(” meme when the user-friendly distros have “app stores” and the terminal commands for app management are simpler than 80’s text adventure inputs. (Apt / zypper / yum / whatever + search, then install and “Y”. You can even install multiple packages by separating them with spaces! Doesn’t require an MIT degree here…)
And the sheer convenience of one single update process to update all your software on your machine at once! This is literally what mindless-consumption devices like smartphones do, and people seem to like it.
Windows fans need Chocolatey to “mimic a fraction of our power!!”(Lol j/k. meme.) And while it’s cool, I found it more complicated command-wise. (There’s also GUI front ends I think to be fair but I digress.)
On Windows if your app doesn’t auto-update, you’ve gotta download a new .exe, or .msi or .zip (“so many formats! Not simple! :(” heh) for EVERY update.
And lastly, when something goes wrong:
Personal experience here but I’m glad I can run any app in Linux with a terminal window and see some computer-speak as to what went wrong. Even if I don’t understand it, somebody will!
Windows often just tells me “No.” and the only option is: “OK”. Or blue screen errors are purposely obfuscated, and worst case advice is “Hi my name is Josh D. A Microsoft support volunteer. Have you run Windows Update? Updated drivers? Reinstall the whole OS to be sure, I guess.”
I’m sincerely not trying to be smug here. The aversion to the terminal is like 99% psychological. People ideally read manuals to figure out how to use their new air fryer, so I don’t think it’s too outlandish to say “Hey learn a couple simple phrases to install and update your system.”
And that’s even if you need the terminal at all.
So many people are so happy to help if Linux is new and different to you, but I’m so done with people mocking it as “not ready” and “unusable by the average person” because somebody tried installing an .exe in Ubuntu or loading up Gentoo once without reading anything, and ran screaming back to Windows.
Human brains are incredible things. I think we’ve just been stuck in some weird culture that makes learning scary and intimidating because it’s easier to sell us push-button-o-matics (with trackers and ads of course!) that way.
P.S: My entire games library, even my discs Windows won’t even bother with, run beautifully, on Nvidia, using Wayland, with 2 monitors, on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
P.P.S: Also I do plenty of art, sometimes even get paid for it, and hereby proclaim that Adobe, Autodesk, and their ilk can go screw themselves. Great software, but It’s not worth the headaches of user-hostility and gouging subscriptions. I don’t miss them.
Flatpak as a software distribution solution already exists and is already widespread.
Flatpak is far from perfect
The user to whom I was replying asked for a replacement to Windows’ .exe. Flatpaks are that, but much better.
They are bound to be bloated and self-serviced, just like .exe.
KDE Discover and GNOME Software eliminate the need to use CLI.
Now all we’re missing is the universal enforcement piece, which I think is non-trivial. It might take off organically but as per my example above, I’m not hopeful.
“Universal enforcement” meaning what? On its face your proposal sounds fundamentally antithetical to what linux is. It’s an open source environment, meaning literally anyone can create software and post it online. Are you wanting all directories to only accept flatpak? I don’t think that would go over well.
You highlight the issue: Linux users like it to be fragmented. So unless Valve forces consolidation, it will stay a mess, and it will continue to repel average users. If that’s what we want, cool. Let’s just stop calling every year the year of Linux, because that will never be the case.
Looks like a one click install on nixos - so youre right to say its fucked on Debian, but that hardly represents the whole OS (like my god you want to hate Linux try LFS and claim it represents the OS).
The way I see it the biggest fragmentation is just users expecting things to work like windows, ie navigating to a website, downloading the software and running it.
Usually Linux users just search their package repo. If you want more bleeding edge software, youre expected to understand Debian/Ubuntu repos probably aren’t the place to go.
Can’t really blame the wrench youre using to put in a screw for doing a bad job.
Like it or not, most users expect to be able to go to a website, download software, and click it to install. It is objectively more intuitive than using a command line, or having users go somewhere else to install software. I don’t see the sense in fighting against user preferences. Embrace it. Offer it. Give the users what they want. That’s how we grow Linux. There is no reason that “bleeding edge” software needs to be complicated to install and use.
I’ll admit Linux users are more allergic to GUI’s than they need to be, but if snowflakeOS becomes more mature then I’d consider an app store much more intuitive and secure than arbitrary full system access.
Cause realistically we could start throwing ads in the system to really make windows users feel at home, but (like the mess that is windows dependencies) tradition can be a weakness more than a strength.
Yeah that’s just radarr devs not actually packaging the thing.
Compare the nixos instructions. Which, mind you, is not a distro for beginners, the faint of heart, or generally people who are neither functional programmers nor devops, but that’s how easy it is when you package shit properly.
It’s not about blame. From a user’s perspective, it doesn’t matter who is to blame. The bottom line is that Linux is harder to use in a lot of scenarios. Torvalds was right: it’s going to take Valve to statically link everything and force developers to use the same libraries. Then it’s trivially easy for devs to maintain a .elf distribution which can be executed across all Valve-compliant Linux distros.
I think youre misrepresenting what Linux is supposed to be, it runs most Walmart displays, kiosks, medical systems, and servers.
Its just now branching into a more usable desktop environment, but its going to do this the right way.
As time as shown is the windows way is incredibly bloated and unstable - I wouldn’t dream of running a critical server off of it, nor even a non-critical one like radarr. Undocumented issues are just part of the game in the windows world.
Taking the easy route will kinda by definition be easier at first.
Though ngl I find it incredibly easier to enter
nix-shell -p radarrthan to navigate to a webpage, download and install an arbitrary executable, give it absolute admin privellages to the ebtirety of my computer to let it ‘do its thing’ for a bit, and be SOL if that doesnt all go perfectly.
That’s not going to work radarr is a daemon. Well at least it’s not going to work as intended, you might be able to start the thing as a user, but it’s likely not what you want to do, you want the thing registered with systemd and start up and shut down with the system. We don’t
nix-shell -p sshdeither.