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:2005-07-10
daemonologist,
Re: "What if the software is not available for my distro?"
This is a real concern. By having various packaging methods that are not supported by all Linux distributions can make it difficult for third parties to supply binary software, drivers, etc. For example in the post-production film/television industry the Linux standard has always been RPM (ie: RHEL,SLED). The reason for this is Red Hat Linux was first used by studios on standard PC systems to lower cost over using SGI Irix workstations. That change caused commercial software developers like Alias (bought by Autodesk), Discreet (also bought by Autodesk), Softimage, etc to port their software to Linux compiled for RPM installation. These companies used by such studios do not support or offer binary packages for their commercial software to be used on Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu and Linspire.
Re: "The amount of software available for RHEL (RedHat Enterprise) (or any of RHEL based distros) is ridiculously low."
Can you clarify what software you need that is available on a Debian based distribution that is not available for RHEL/Fedora Linux users?
Member since:2005-07-02
These companies used by such studios do not support or offer binary packages for their commercial software to be used on Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu and Linspire.
http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/alien.html
Yes, this can be dangerous for system software, and should not be used for that, but for apps it often works quite well.
BTW, the reason these big commercial vendors will only offer a few versions of their apps is not because it's hard to package for multiple distros, but because they don't want to *support* multiple distros. Also, they often have commercial agreements (i.e. partnerships) with RedHat, so the choice of distro is also a strategic decision.
Edited 2007-02-24 18:15
Member since:2007-01-30
The way I see it, the problem exists on basically two levels: packaging format and run-time environment i.e. libraries (the more difficult one to solve)
The run-time environment problem can't be solved even by compiling software from source. Here is an example: I just tried to compile latest Inkscape (vector graphics app) from source on my RHEL 4 (actually Scientific Linux CERN) machine. The ./configure -script stops with an error:
checking for INKSCAPE... Requested 'gtk+-2.0 >= 2.8.0' but version of GTK+ is 2.4.13
configure: error: Package requirements (gdkmm-2.4 glibmm-2.4 gtkmm-2.4 gtk+-2.0 >= 2.8.0 libxml-2.0 >= 2.6.11 libxslt >= 1.0.15 cairo sigc++-2.0 >= 2.0.11 gthread-2.0 >= 2.0 libpng >= 1.2) were not met:
The new software does not apparently work with RHEL's "obsolete" libraries. This means basically that I would have to install new Gtk (and its dependencies!) from source as well! I actually did this some time ago and it sort of worked but the new Gtk broke some existing RHEL apps.
There is lots of software not available for RHEL (note that I'm NOT talking about Fedora here, there are many more software packages for Fedora than for RHEL). Just some of them are listed below:
- LaTeX beamer (presentation tool, had to install it by hand, but works)
- Auctex (emacs extension)
- new version of Rhythmbox (the version provided with RHEL crashes all the time)
- Inkscape
- OpenInventor (either SGI or Coin3d implementation, Fedora 3 RPMs seem to work)
- Evince
- KPDF (the one for KDE >= 3.4, not the KDE 3.3 version)
- Desktop search tools
What I would like to have is this:
1. More software
2. More up-to-date software (e.g. when new version of some program becomes available I would like to upgrade this particular tool to its latest version)
3. No need to upgrade the entire operating system just to install new end user apps.
Member since:
2007-01-30
What if the software is not avaailable for my distro? The amount of software available for RHEL (RedHat Enterprise) (or any of RHEL based distros) is ridiculously low. What if one needs RHEL (or compatible) for work but also needs desktop apps not packaged for RHEL?
Or what if one needs new version of a desktop app (say Inkscape, Epiphany, Rhythmbox)? Having to upgrade the entire operating system just to install new versions of a few desktop apps is extremely inconvenient for the end user.