[lionkor]

Well, the rest of the world (outside of MacOS and Windows) settled on repositories and package managers, with hash verification, versioning, updating/installing/uninstalling with composable commands (that can also be used via GUIs), etc.

Use Fedora for half a year and tell me what you prefer.

[Brian_K_White]

Those are only tolerable because: They are free, optional, operated by people who have no incentive to be the slightest bit anti-user, and you are never actually limited to them so you can take the convenience because you still get the options and control when you do need it.

Produce the `./configure && make install` for Office and you would have a point.

[MathMonkeyMan]

MacOS and Windows, as far as I understand, do the equivalent of "build for the target OS/arch and include DLLs for all transitive dependencies except the system ones." MacOS puts all that in a disk image while Windows I don't know puts it in one or several directories.

I like the "one consistent system with one dependency tree" policy of Debian et al, but with flatpack, appimage, snap, etc. the "application" part of software might prefer the Windows/MacOS model.

[nalekberov]

I use package manager too regardless of OS, but after all Microsoft Store isn’t for tech-savvy people, right?

[lionkor]

There are UI frontends for package managers, like KDE Discover

[coffeeaddict1]

And yet none of those "outsiders" have figured out a way to economically renumerate developers for their work. Flathub had a initiative a few years ago to add payments to help developers fund their projects, but I haven't seen anything come out of it.

[aragilar]

Most linux distros require that software they distribute is open source, and link to the home pages of applications, so effectively donations are the only way to pay for those. There are paid distros (which are almost always about support, there was a paid GNUStep distro though many years ago).

On the other hand, Steam et al are app stores where developers can get paid.

[coffeeaddict1]

Open source doesn't mean free.

> On the other hand, Steam et al are app stores where developers can get paid.

Yes, this is exactly my point. App stores have a reason to exist. They provide discoverability and a streamlined way to monetise your app, something that is sorely lacking in open source projects. A case in point for example is Krita, which is published as a paid app on the Microsoft Store. The revenue generated by the sales goes to fund the development of the project. Linux needs an equivalent.

[lionkor]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can download Blender from almost any package manager, and the devs of Blender are paid.

[coffeeaddict1]

This works for Blender because they're a big fish and receive money from big corporations. The vast majority of good open source projects are underfunded or unpaid. Linux distros need a way to streamline payments to open source apps. As I mentioned above, Flathub [0] had an initiative in this direction, but not sure what happened to that.

[0] https://itsfoss.com/news/flathub-paid-apps

[tonyedgecombe]

>Use Fedora for half a year and tell me what you prefer.

I prefer good high-dpi support, Wifi and Bluetooth that works, usability, developers getting rewarded for their hard work, etc.

[lionkor]

I'm legitimately not sure what you're saying. Are you saying Linux, Windows, or MacOS? Because as far as Bt and Wifi go, usability, rewarding developers, that applies to Linux and MacOS and ... not Windows whatsoever. I'm not sure about High DPI support, probably sucks on X11, maybe on Wayland, so I'm guessing you mean Windows?

FYI I develop software for Linux in my free time, I don't get paid and I feel pretty rewarded.

[tonyedgecombe]

>I'm legitimately not sure what you're saying.

I'm saying Linux is a mediocre desktop operating system, especially on laptops.

[1718627440]

> probably sucks on X11

Xrandr works just fine and has been for decades.