Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 25th Jun 2008 22:31 UTC, submitted by Rahul
Earlier this week, we reported on the Berlin Packaging API, an effort to consolidate the various different packaging formats and managers in the Linux world. Many compared this new effort to PackageKit, and today Linux.com is running an article detailing what PackageKit exactly is, with a few quotes from the project's lead developer, Richard Hughes.
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Member since:
2005-11-11
You're missing the point. It doesn't matter whether Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSE/etc are different operating systems altogether:
1. End users don't expect them to be completely different operating systems. They expect them to be just variations, like Windows XP vs Windows 98 vs Windows 2003. The media has taught people over years that different distros are just different variations.
2. You can go against end users' expectations, but that just means they'll get pissed off and move to, say, MacOS X. And voila: even less users for Linux, and therefore less potential developers who can help with the development of Linux and Linux-related software, less incentive for hardware manufacturers to provide drivers or hardware specs for Linux, etc.
3. For me, as a software developer, it's just annoying as **** to not be able to provide distro-neutral packages. Why should my end users have to wait 2 months before my latest version, with important new bug fixes and features, are packaged into their distro? Why can't I provide my own package that works on most Linux distros? Why shouldn't I? There are technical problems surrounding the creation of cross-distribution binary packages, but the only reason why those technical problems exist is because of politics and culture.
You say that all those distros are different OSes altogether. Why should they be different OSes? Why can't they just be different, compatible, flavors of the same OS? There's nothing technical that prevents distributions from becoming compatible. There are benefits to increased interoperability.