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
That's not a technical problem, that's a social-problem problem. The reason why distros are incompatible is being they aren't trying to be compatible. If they try, then they'll succeed, hence a social-political problem.
Oh really? We have these standard called "HTML 4" and "CSS". Did standardization of the web hurt innovation? Are Firefox, Opera, Webkit and the like not innovating because they're compatible? *
Why can't distros innovate *and* be compatible? They can just shift the compatibility layer to the background, where it's not user-visible but works, while still doing awesome stuff in the foreground. Being compatible with the i386 didn't prevent Intel and AMD from innovating either.
(* Today, in 2008, all browsers with the exception of Internet Explorer are mostly compatible. If I write an HTML 4 and CSS compliant website, then 95 out of 100 times, it renders the same in Firefox, Opera, Konqueror and Safari. Only Internet Explorer is constantly giving me problems, but my point that web standardization didn't hurt innovation still remains.)
Member since:2006-11-17
When distros have the same goal and there is no technical difficulty, I tend to agree, but not all distros can be compatible. Do you want to install MSI package on LFS? Or do you want rpm on Gentoo? What is the point of LFS or Gentoo if you install rpm on them? And what about GoboLinux? Or Puppy? Puppy has no system V init. That's the point of Puppy (among others)! So what if you install openssh rpm on puppy and it doesn't start when you turn on the computer? This is a technical problem. If you force compatibility on GoboLinux or Puppy or LFS, you remove the point of those distros and beyond that, you remove innovation. Look at Windows and its compatibility with DOS! Don't tell me that DOS doesn't suck!
Now when 2 linux distros have more than 20% market share each, then we'll talk about compatibility between them. Until then, it's all about inovation and getting the critical mass where compatibility makes sense.
Member since:
2008-03-08
Ofcourse there are. The dstro makers do not wake up one day and decide to Think Different (TM) to break compatibility. newer versions of software come along, there are different technical solutions applied to real problems. All of these can cause inconsistency. Add up many different packages/issues and you get to a state where we are at now.
As well as disadvantages. Bigger "Jumps" in feature sets as distro's align themselves and not introduce incompatibilities in a natural fashion. Upstreams become stale as their latest and greatest are not picked up for a long time after release... potentially hiding quality issues for a year or two.
Even if there is perfect alignment, Packagekit will still not allow you to make universal binaries, just universal install methods - probably of little use to upstream developers.
@ whoever suggested that source is the universal install "package" - just write a source "backend" for packagekit. Click on source file(s), click install. People might find it useful. (I do not expect it to be that simple... can't ignore the many install options that packages havem but I guess good defaults can be chosen for atleast some of them.)