[diffeomorphism]

> you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work

Isn't that exactly what appimages are? E.g. download Krita, double click, done.

Also, I thought with mobile people finally realized that "download blobs" is much worse than just installing from stores/repos? Even Windows has winget by now.

[_8j50]

That's the problem with big picture thinking. You are right, in the grand scheme of things it is better. But as a consumer it sucks. Which repo? Now I have to maintain repos alongside apps? Why can't the app take care of its own compatibility and upgrade needs? Why am I involved? I just want to use the damn thing without interruption.

On mac, I don't use their appstore, I just get dmg images and get going. Same on windows. On linux, I try to stick to the package manager but man! The moment I touch python I regret not using venv and avoiding any interaction with the system's python almost every time. Or if a distro package lacks some feature because of distro decisions which should have been install time decisions and now I have to build from source and figure out aclocal dev packages,deps,ugh...I accept the pain, part of then package but I won't pretend it feels good.

[diffeomorphism]

> Which repo? Now I have to maintain repos alongside apps? Why can't the app take care of its own compatibility and upgrade needs? Why am I involved? I just want to use the damn thing without interruption.

Which is exactly why distros have very big repos, iOS has exactly one store and so does android (yeah, yeah amazon, fdroid...; few people install these). So that you never, ever have to care about that.

Simple rule of thumb as a consumer: If it is not in the repo/store/steam then it does not exist. Same for iOS or android by the way: If you need to jailbreak/root for an app, for the average user it might as well not exist.

> On mac, I don't use their appstore, I just get dmg images and get going. Same on windows.

Yeah, same for appimages. And you don't use the mac appstore because it currently is much worse than the comparable linux offering. Yet, both apple and MS are clearly pushing in that direction.

> and now I have to build from source and figure out aclocal dev packages,deps,ugh...

Er, no you don't. If the mac .dmg has those same issues you don't do that, if the windows .exe has those same issues you don't do that. You simply say "that sucks" and go on with your life and install the "fixed" one half a year later. In fact for windows software that seems so much more painful (compared to linux) that I would not even attempt it. It is nice that linux is so much better at that, but still as a user you simply don't do that.

[_8j50]

> Simple rule of thumb as a consumer: If it is not in the repo/store/steam then it does not exist. Same for iOS or android by the way: If you need to jailbreak/root for an app, for the average user it might as well not exist.

Forget all that. I am talking about gary's clipboard manager or something. This is crazy, you can't even install elasticsearch or Mongo without adding a repo!

My whole point was this approach works om servers but on desktops, the use case is different. I want random apps by random people on their random site. Not distro accepted and approved stuff that was digested through layers of bureaucracy and one size fits all crowdpleasing. That is obviously not working.

> Er, no you don't. If the mac .dmg has those same issues you don't do that, if the windows .exe has those same issues you don't do that.

I don't have those issues on mac and windows because the gatekeeping distro maintainers aren't choosing how to build or preconfigure it. It is a direct relationship between I the consumer and the developer. No middle man! No system deps (well.. except on mac with homebrew but not dmg)

[vladvasiliu]

You could do that if software vendors bothered to provide the option.

To your example, you can download Elasticsearch as an archive from their website [0], unarchive it, and you're off to the races.

JetBrains IDEs work the same way, grab a zip, unzip it, and bam, you're good to go. They can even keep themselves up to date on their own. It will also install a shortcut in your DE's menu.

Ditto for Zoom and 1Passowrd, who even support more "exotic" distributions, such as Arch, on top of Snaps and Flatpaks.

While I think that in practice the issues you describe do exist, I think the cause is mainly that Linux is still a second-class citizen and not a priority for vendors to support properly. But hey, at least they try, as opposed to others who don't give a damn at all.

---

[0] https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch ; also available as a .deb or .rpm download

[dTal]

People seem to think Linux has a technical problem with just distributing binaries, but it really doesn't - it's a cultural problem. Even many pieces of free software don't bother to provide archives you can just unpack and run. I heave a deep sigh when I find an interesting program I want to try but my options are "run Ubuntu <version> and install the .deb" or "build from source". If Zoom, JetBrains, Arduino, Blender, Firefox, Julia, VSCode, SALOME, and X-Plane 11 can just give me a binary, why can't you?

Yet we still see discussions like this, where people think packaging is some major roadblock on Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777172