Linux is too pompous to be useful for anything "user" side. Worst part is they have no excuse for being so.
____
You'll see the linux OS support 4,096 processors, before you'll see anything that resembles a usable installer. For some reason the former is more important.

User friendliness is so "sux" that it's considered a "fair and reasonable" deployment strategy to just say "here's the source, compile it yourself". I mean WTF is that.

Times have changed. Ever heard of Ubuntu?

Quote: Original post by lithos
Linux is too pompous to be useful for anything "user" side. Worst part is they have no excuse for being so.

How much money have you paid to have the slightest right to beg for excuses?

Quote: You'll see the linux OS support 4,096 processors, before you'll see anything that resembles a usable installer. For some reason the former is more important.

See Kambiz post. Unix has had functioning installing concepts long before windows even existed.

Windows-Like-Installers are not the holy grail of installing applications (Unix/Linux like installers aren't either!). Anyways, there exist binary self-contained installers (UT, VMWare), if you want. But amongst unix (incl. BSD) and Linux (+GNU) people, .deb/.rpm/.tar.gz and makefile based installers are more popular for some reasons (e.g. because you have a central package manager that automagically resolves most conflicts and keeps your system mostly up-to-date in a bandwidth-friendly manner). Even proprietary software integrates into that concept, for an example, the non-free version of VirtualBox can be installed via apt.

But Windows installers as is work against common and established unix concepts, basically because they breach holes into the fence of security, the bless of auto-update, and are unknown to the package masterminds and thus clutter your organization and knowledge of installed software. Unix is not Windows.

I remember this reply from a native Unix and Linux user, from an email-discussion about packages:

Quote: I'm sorry but the idea is bogus. Primo, nobody should run binaries
from strangers. Secundo, you haven't justified bundling boost,llvm,
wxwidgets (should be provided by the system).

Personally, if you don't provide source i can build from i'm not going
to run your stuff. Period. Really, it's not windows, and you shouldn't
expect every bogus concept to apply (luckily for you i'm not going to
rant how the massive influx of ex-windows-only users has already
screwed many stuff, just look at any desktop :P).

Quote: User friendliness is so "sux" that it's considered a "fair and reasonable" deployment strategy to just say "here's the source, compile it yourself". I mean WTF is that.

I regret having thrown so many chars against a hollow wall. You never tried a modern Linux-Distro, right?

Quote:
Personally, if you don't provide source i can build from i'm not going
to run your stuff. Period. Really, it's not windows, and you shouldn't
expect every bogus concept to apply (luckily for you i'm not going to
rant how the massive influx of ex-windows-only users has already
screwed many stuff, just look at any desktop :P).

That kind of elitist bullshit is exactly the reason why the Linux community cannot be taken seriously, and why Linux just doesn't advance into the mainstream.

I am using Linux, and I can summarize my position as follows: "Personally, if you don't provide a binary, i'm not going to run your stuff. Period.". That "bogus concept" saves me hours (or even days) of my time I'd rather not spend fixing compiler errors and hunting down the dependency of the dependency some source depends on. It's called "efficiency", and it works really well for Windows.

I recently installed the new Mono + MonoDevelop on my (slightly outdated - no, I don't install a new kernel every five seconds) OpenSuse system. I thought I was going insane. I spent at least three hours trying to get all the dependencies together, and in the end, installing them killed existing applications (Banshee - which I didn't use - but still). Installing MS Visual Studio takes a few clicks, and won't destroy anything.

Oh, and this one is really absurd:

Quote: I'm sorry but the idea is bogus. Primo, nobody should run binaries
from strangers.

And of course that person will check all provided sources, line by line, for any possible malicious code before compiling anything, right ?

Right...

[Edited by - Yann L on September 9, 2009 6:26:45 AM]

Quote: Original post by Yann L

Quote:
Personally, if you don't provide source i can build from i'm not going
to run your stuff. Period. Really, it's not windows, and you shouldn't
expect every bogus concept to apply (luckily for you i'm not going to
rant how the massive influx of ex-windows-only users has already
screwed many stuff, just look at any desktop :P).

That kind of elitist bullshit is exactly the reason why the Linux community cannot be taken seriously,

Those are opinions, obivously strong enough to make him not use windows or avoid binary and proprietary software. And to be honest, those are also the reasons why I don't use windows at home.

Imho, one could also consider statements like "Linux needs proper installers" a kind of elitist bullshit, because I hear something like "Windows installers are The One Truth" in it, but neither Windows-concepts nor Unix-concepts are.

Also consider that this was private chat, where, from my experience, tone is generally more tartly and maybe more exaggerating than it would be in public chat.

Quote: and why Linux just doesn't advance into the mainstream.

To be honest, this is anyways outside the range of my personal interests.

If someone builds a distro which saturates all windows users by introducing alien concepts, I am perfectly fine with it. But I wouldn't want to have most concepts (non central installers, monolithic binary registry, to name only two) on my installation and they would be a reason to not use that distro.

Quote: I am using Linux, and I can summarize my position as follows: "Personally, if you don't provide a binary, i'm not going to run your stuff. Period.". That "bogus concept" saves me hours (or even days) of my time I'd rather not spend fixing compiler errors and hunting down the dependency of the dependency some source depends on.

As said, there is the possiblity of binary-self-contained-packages (see my other post), but they are not popular amongst native unix/linux-users for said reasons.

Don't blame the concept itself for bad packages. If Windows people don't pack all required dependencies into their installer, we run into the same problems (or why do pages like dll-files.com exist?)

Quote: It's called "efficiency", and it works really well for Windows.

What is your measure of efficiency?

Central package management e.g. is efficient w/r/t bandwidth or with having an eye on broken dependencies.

Or imagine how auto-update is only sane and efficient with windows-like-installers when they only update upon actually starting those apps, hence either delaying startup, or decreasing performance as for background update.

The other method I imagine is having hundreds to thousands of services for each auto-updating software installed on your machine. That's not efficient either, and w/r/t dll-dependencies would introduce a lot of redundancy, which is in the way of performance and efficient usage of memory. Imagine e.g. how multiple indie games will download the same SDL.dll multiple times, even when those games themselves did not change, instead of just having the package manager download it exactly once. With central package management, I can go for lunch, and in the meanwhile let my box update all my installed software.

The only "efficient" I see for Windows-Installers is upon first installation.

I don't say that Windows-Installers are inconvenient, but on my mostly non-fluctuating software base, debian packaging fits my needs far better.

Quote: I recently installed the new Mono + MonoDevelop on my (slightly outdated - no, I don't install a new kernel every five seconds) OpenSuse system. I thought I was going insane. I spent at least three hours trying to get all the dependencies together, and in the end, installing them killed existing applications (Banshee - which I didn't use - but still). Installing MS Visual Studio takes a few clicks, and won't destroy anything.

I don't use rpm, but maybe you have misconfigured your system in the past, or used rpm's based on HEAD branch and not the ones blessed by the distributor, or the Mono+MonoDevelop people just provided broken packages.

Personally I never had problems with software that is in the standard repositories, and I can't remember how many years it has been since I last had problems with alien debs. And I update the kernel not often, too (say, once or 0.5 times a year maybe).

Quote: Oh, and this one is really absurd:

Quote: I'm sorry but the idea is bogus. Primo, nobody should run binaries
from strangers.

And of course that person will check all provided sources, line by line, for any possible malicious code before compiling anything, right ?

Right...

Of course not, it's the principle of possibility to review the code, and for larger projects, we have peer review, and the peer crowd does not even have to be big.

Compare this to packaged food, where the ingredients must be displayed somewhere:

• A lot of people don't care at all.
  
• Some people would really only buy that food if ingredients are visible but without reading them, or only reading them partially.
  
• And only a few will actually read all the ingredients.

You would be in the first category, I would be in the second. Imho, every position is okay.

[Edited by - phresnel on September 9, 2009 7:30:06 AM]

Gah, Opera crashed and killed my post.

Quote: Original post by Yann L

Quote:
Personally, if you don't provide source i can build from i'm not going
to run your stuff. Period. Really, it's not windows, and you shouldn't
expect every bogus concept to apply (luckily for you i'm not going to
rant how the massive influx of ex-windows-only users has already
screwed many stuff, just look at any desktop :P).

That kind of elitist bullshit is exactly the reason why the Linux community cannot be taken seriously,

It's just one opinion of a UNIX user who is used to having source code to his programs.

Quote: and why Linux just doesn't advance into the mainstream.

My sister uses Ubuntu, and she isn't exactly what you call a techie.

Quote: I am using Linux, and I can summarize my position as follows: "Personally, if you don't provide a binary, i'm not going to run your stuff. Period.". That "bogus concept" saves me hours (or even days) of my time I'd rather not spend fixing compiler errors and hunting down the dependency of the dependency some source depends on. It's called "efficiency", and it works really well for Windows.

Totally right. However, decent distros provide package managers which are just as efficient once you got used to them.

Quote: I recently installed the new Mono + MonoDevelop on my (slightly outdated - no, I don't install a new kernel every five seconds) OpenSuse system. I thought I was going insane. I spent at least three hours trying to get all the dependencies together, and in the end, installing them killed existing applications (Banshee - which I didn't use - but still).

YaST sucks.

Quote: Installing MS Visual Studio takes a few clicks, and won't destroy anything.

A question, how many clicks does it take to install Eclipse on Windows?

Quote:
Oh, and this one is really absurd:

Quote: I'm sorry but the idea is bogus. Primo, nobody should run binaries
from strangers.

And of course that person will check all provided sources, line by line, for any possible malicious code before compiling anything, right ?

Right...

Typical paranoid sysadmin wisdom: He can much more easily analyze what exactly went wrong when a program fucks up his PC.



The thing is, and we all know, the software market is in large part dominated and mostly aimed at Windows. It's efficient to develop for Windows only, but it's good that there are free alternatives.

And IMHO, UNIX has much more culture and dignity than Windows.



/me goes back to work (using Windows because I don't have much time for installing programs and some of them are Windows-only)

Quote: Original post by Sander
According to Microsoft, Linux and Mac both have about 5% market share.

Source: http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple

It all depends on how you count,

w3schools track visits to their own site (mainly web developers),

netapplications track visits to mainly US and European sites.

w3counter does the same as netapps (but has closer to 2% for Linux)

It is important to remember that netapps, w3counter etc only track how often the OS is used to browse to specific websites, Microsoft most likely estimates the number of installations instead. (A mac that runs both OS X and Windows can be counted as one installation of each but netapps will give a higher value to the OS that is actually used most of the time)

Quote: Original post by Yann L
That kind of elitist bullshit is exactly the reason why the Linux community cannot be taken seriously, and why Linux just doesn't advance into the mainstream.

I totally agree, but that viewpoint (while very loud) is among the minority.

Quote: Original post by Yann L
I am using Linux, and I can summarize my position as follows: "Personally, if you don't provide a binary, i'm not going to run your stuff. Period.". That "bogus concept" saves me hours (or even days) of my time I'd rather not spend fixing compiler errors and hunting down the dependency of the dependency some source depends on. It's called "efficiency", and it works really well for Windows.

I almost never compile things from source - the only times I do are for programs or libraries I actually want to modify. I install everything via the package manager - even proprietary applications like Skype and Virtualbox provide rpm packages.

Quote: Original post by Yann L
I recently installed the new Mono + MonoDevelop on my (slightly outdated - no, I don't install a new kernel every five seconds) OpenSuse system. I thought I was going insane. I spent at least three hours trying to get all the dependencies together, and in the end, installing them killed existing applications (Banshee - which I didn't use - but still). Installing MS Visual Studio takes a few clicks, and won't destroy anything.

I can install Monodevelop with a simple:
yum install monodevelop
Or, if you prefer, launching PackageKit, searching for monodevelop and clicking install. Not to mention that this same means can be used for installing eclipse, code::blocks and anything else. I have installed VS, and it is much harder than this. You have to install the Platform SDK etc.

Of course if your distro does not have monodevelop in the repositories or has too old a version, this becomes a problem. What version of OpenSuse are you using exactly?

Quote: Original post by Simian Man

Quote: Original post by Yann L
That kind of elitist bullshit is exactly the reason why the Linux community cannot be taken seriously, and why Linux just doesn't advance into the mainstream.

I totally agree, but that viewpoint (while very loud) is among the minority.

On the other hand, I think it can't be the reason why Linux doesn't advance into mainstream if it's only a minority's opinion; but I don't want to derail into an old discussion about why Linux isn't mainstream yet.



I feel a bit guilty for posting private chat into public discussion, but please let me again emphasize that in such private discussions, words are often much stronger and often exaggerated. You know, like private conversations at the pub, with a nice schooner in your hand. My fail to post that and speak for him.