Decentralised Installation Systems
Linked by Thomas Leonard on Tue 16th Jan 2007 00:32 UTC
General Development In the Free and Open Source communities we are proud of our 'bazaar' model, where anyone can join in by setting up a project and publishing their programs. Users are free to pick and choose whatever software they want... provided they're happy to compile from source, resolve dependencies manually and give up automatic security and feature updates. In this essay, I introduce 'decentralised' installation systems, such as Autopackage and Zero Install, which aim to provide these missing features.
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bravo
by 25bravo on Tue 16th Jan 2007 19:24 UTC
25bravo
Member since:
2006-01-04

I'm all for this kind of solution. I hope it expands to be more robust. It would be nice if it could integrate into the update managers of various distros. It would also be nice if it integrated bittorrent.

All we need now is for a distro to use it as default. The big guys, like Ubuntu, probably won't cave in. But a new kid on the block could probably implement it. Imagine how much smaller a distro team would need to be, if they outsourced the packaging to the devs.

But one question hanging in my mind is compatibility conflicts with different kernels. Alice couldn't use two different programs that rely on two different kernels, at the same time, could she? Or, take VMWare for instance, what if specific kernel modules need to be installed? User-mode-linux?

I personally think that linux needs to be more modularized. Drivers need to be pushed into user-space. But, in the mean-time, how can something like 0install be a full end-to-end solution? Would there have to be at least _some_ alternative package manager to handle system critical software?

Reply Score: 2

RE: bravo
by Moochman on Tue 16th Jan 2007 22:24 in reply to "bravo"
Moochman Member since:
2005-07-06

All we need now is for a distro to use it as default. The big guys, like Ubuntu, probably won't cave in. But a new kid on the block could probably implement it. Imagine how much smaller a distro team would need to be, if they outsourced the packaging to the devs.

Ulteo?

I personally think that linux needs to be more modularized. Drivers need to be pushed into user-space.

Agreed, but I doubt it'll happen anytime soon, given the sentiments of the kernel devs. Actually, I wouldn't care about the drivers being kernel-space, if it weren't for the fact that it makes installing them much more complicated than it should be.... (For instance, why do you think people so often revert to ndiswrapper, even for wireless chipsets that Linux is "supposed to" support?)

But, in the mean-time, how can something like 0install be a full end-to-end solution? Would there have to be at least _some_ alternative package manager to handle system critical software?

I'd say the answer to that is a near-indisputable yes.

Edited 2007-01-16 22:34

Reply Parent Score: 2