Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 23rd Jun 2008 16:51 UTC, submitted by sjvn
Installing software on Linux. In the world of online minefields, this is the big one. Back in the day, you installed software on Linux by compiling it manually. Time-consuming, but assuming you had a decent knowledge of gcc, make, and maintaining library files, this could actually work. Later one came the package management systems that were supposed to make installing software on Linux a breeze: rpm, dpkg, and so on, and so forth. Since human beings have the innate tendency to assume that everyone else is wrong and only they are right, we are now stuck with 3453495 different Linux package managers. Denis Washington, a Fedora developer, is taking steps to resolve this issue.
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Member since:
2006-11-17
MSI is just another package manager that adds to the confusion. I don't see Microsoft doing anything to make MSI compatible with autopackage, dpkg, rpm or any other package manager. If you package your software with MSI, it will only install on Windows. That's not better than doing a rpm that will install only on Mandriva or a deb that wil only install on Debian.
Of course, there are more people running Windows than Mandriva and Debian put together, so the problem doesn't show on Windows and it looks like it is a good way to distribute software, but really it's just the package manager of Windows and it's not better than rpm or deb. I can't think of anything that can be done with MSI that can't be done with rpm, but I think about a lot of stuff that can be done with rpm but not with MSI, and even more with urpmi, apt-get and yum.
I mean, the problem is not with rpm or deb. The problem is that 1000 people have MSI installed when 1 man has rpm installed and 1 man has dpkg installed. Add another api on top of rpm and dpkg, and maybe 1 people will have that installed.
So, if you are a software vendor, what will you use? the new api (1 user), rpm (1 user), deb (1 user) or msi (1000 users)?
Anyway, MSI is available on many distros (including Mandriva and debian) with wine. wine implements MSI.
Edited 2008-06-24 08:20 UTC