[peteretep]

I think those of us who don’t use Linux as a daily driver forget how completely incompatible different distros are. I made the mistake of trying to provision Amazon Linux desktops to users via Workspaces, and quickly realised I was going to need to build almost everything I wanted from source.

[gtf21]

Even those of us who do use Linux as a daily driver can forget sometimes ;) I spend my days in Arch and occasionally interact with Debian-based servers but never have to consider the cross-compatibility (or otherwise) of other distros.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Yeah, as someone who theoretically would love to be using an open OS and has been waiting for Linux Desktop to become a tolerable experience for about 20 years now, application installation is by far my biggest gripe with it and it not only remains a huge problem in 2021, it remains a problem the community doesn't even seem to want to fix.

[bogwog]

What do you find problematic about app installation on Linux? The poster you replied to was talking about mixing packages from different distros, not about installing apps in general.

Installing packages on your distro is very easy, either via a simple command like `apt install <package>` or via a graphical appstore-like interface to the same thing. All major distro package managers are very mature and reliable.

Distributing software through those repos as a developer is not very easy, but it's not required either. If you want to distribute your app to all Linux distros without worrying about compatibility, and without requiring your customers to use the command line, you can use something like [App Image](https://appimage.org/), which is basically the same concept as [App Bundles](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...) on Macs.

There are also a lot of (less good) alternatives to App Images, like [Flatpack](https://flatpak.org/) and [Snap](https://snapcraft.io/).

If you want something fancier, you could go with something like [Guix](https://guix.gnu.org/) or [Nix](https://nixos.org/explore.html) if your customers are developers or otherwise technical.

If you want to get less fancy, you could distribute your binaries with an install script that detects the current distro/version and downloads dependencies using the installed package manager.

And if you're a user who just wants to download stuff on their computer, you just need to follow the instructions from the provider. It usually involves one of the methods above.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> What do you find problematic about app installation on Linux? The poster you replied to was talking about mixing packages from different distros, not about installing apps in general.

That's the thing, I very frequently have to install applications that are not in the repo for any given distribution I'm using. Either this is because of the version I require, or the application is somewhat niche, or there's a special build, etc.

Usually my options in these cases are to adapt a package from another distro, or compile from source like it's still 1970. This is not a problem on other Desktop OSs because they never got into this pm/repo/distro model in the first place.

> Installing packages on your distro is very easy, either via a simple command like `apt install <package>` or via a graphical appstore-like interface to the same thing. All major distro package managers are very mature and reliable.

I have been using Linux for 20 years.

> Distributing software through those repos as a developer is not very easy, but it's not required either. If you want to distribute your app to all Linux distros without worrying about compatibility, and without requiring your customers to use the command line, you can use something like [App Image](https://appimage.org/), which is basically the same concept as [App Bundles](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...) on Macs.

Yeah, thanks, I'm aware. As a user that only works if someone bothered to make an AppImage, which many Linux developers don't bother to do.

> If you want something fancier, you could go with something like [Guix](https://guix.gnu.org/) or [Nix](https://nixos.org/explore.html) if your customers are developers or otherwise technical.

No thanks. I'd rather not have to learn an entirely new language just to do things like distribute and install applications.

> If you want to get less fancy, you could distribute your binaries with an install script that detects the current distro/version and downloads dependencies using the installed package manager.

Probably the worst option anyone has ever come up with. All the problems of package management plus all the problems of installers rolled into one.

> And if you're a user who just wants to download stuff on their computer, you just need to follow the instructions from the provider. It usually involves one of the methods above.

Usually those instructions consist of "install from your package manager" or "build it from source", see above.

Your post illustrates my point nicely: you guys don't even seem to think this is a problem.

[rekado]

>> If you want something fancier, you could go with something like [Guix](https://guix.gnu.org/) or [Nix](https://nixos.org/explore.html) if your customers are developers or otherwise technical.

> No thanks. I'd rather not have to learn an entirely new language just to do things like distribute and install applications.

Common misunderstanding, but you don't need to know Guile or the Nix language to use either of these systems.

"guix install foo", "guix pack -f docker bar", etc.

Guix also has package transformation options ("build with this patch", "build with these sources instead", "replace foo with bar in the package graph") that are exposed to the command line and also don't require you learn any Scheme.