Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Thu 22nd Feb 2007 23:24 UTC, submitted by Andrzej Ptak
There are currently at least five popular ways of installing software in GNU/Linux. None of them are widely accepted throughout the popular distributions. This situation is not a problem for experienced users - they can make decisions for themselves. However, for a newcomer in the GNU/Linux world, installing new software is always pretty confusing. The article tries to sum up some of the recent efforts to fix this problem and examine the possible future of packaging software in GNU/Linux.
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Member since:
2006-11-02
Someone sees an announcement on a news page that version x.2 of FireFox just was released and they want to install it.
On OS X you click on the link to the new version and either you get a disk image or an archive of the app. Double clicking either unpacks the app or mounts the disk image. Both ways the app is ready to run. The user can drag the app to anywhere they want and OS X automatically makes note of file types and other such app related issues automatically. Prefs go right in the common user pref directory. Deleting the app involves dragging it to the trash can. Most apps have all its resources tiddley packed in the .app bundle folder so when the app is moved or deleted nothing is left behind.
Windows usually has an installer/unistaller for apps. Corruption of the registry can lead to problems. And apps need to be re-installed if you re-install your system. Not as flexible and tidy as OS X's bundles but you also don't have to worry about apps leaving extra files around on the harddrive.
Linux...
You have to know about adding repository urls to your package management utility.
You have to wait around for someone to manually add new apps to the database.
You can be faced with your current repositories not having the app you are interested in.
Other than packages are the way it's always been done with Linux, what practical benefit does an average desktop user get from downloading a common user app like FireFox from a repository and having it wrapped in one of the many different Linux package types?
Since the FireFox can run on Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc the differences between the systems can't be that drastic. Is just each of these distros can't agree where to place various app and config files? And if these differences are important enough to keep that you require a package format to handle the differences what benefit are Linux users getting from this disparity?