“In this article, I’ll ignore for the sake of argument that I am a developer, and side with users. Nowadays we have tens of thousands of applications available for Linux. Some are simple, some are rather complex, some are huge. This ought to be enough to achieve world domination, according to some Linux proponents.” Read the editorial at LinuxAndMain.
On the Importance of Providing RPMs with your Software Package
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
More and more people are starting to bash on _free_ software.
That is okey if it is in the form of a bugreport but when it is all over the place it starts to anoy me.
I think that this will ultimatly kill free software. Of course people will continue to create free software. _But_ the will not publish it in the degree the are doing it now.
Remember that the developers doesn’t get paid, they are just doing it for fun. (There aint many developers that say that there out to crush Microsoft, or am I wrong?). Give them some slack and encourage them. And most important of all give them feedback in form of bugreports.
Is there anyone who agree with me?
I ain’t good at spanish. Is there somebody who can translate
“A continuación un recetario para multiplicar por 10 los usuarios de tu programa:”
The impossible task of managing source on a BSD system…
# cd /usr/ports/audio/xmms
# make all install clean
<a few minutes later>
./xmms
—snip—
Want to build directly from source?
# cd /usr/ports/audio/xmms
# make extract
# cd work/xmms
# ./configure –help
—snip—
Am I missing something? This isn’t five years ago. If you’re running a non-MS based system and you don’t have some sort of make setup installed, you aren’t going to have much luck. The BSD port system is, IMHO, almost flawless (easy to maintain and update, very few bugs, does a good job of fixing dependencies)… You can also pkg_install a .tar.gz file (like in Slack) ..
While it is just an editorial, I found it to be poorly researched and a broad generalization. I -want- source. I -want- to make things myself/tweak code.
Not everyone is me, I realize. Not everyone is familiar with navigating source code/make/gmake/gcc etc…
My arguement is that if there isn’t an RPM/binary/package/port for the software you need–MAKE IT YOURSELF. And if you don’t know how (it’s ridiculously easy in most cases), then you don’t have a right to complain…
Me ranting,
Vache
http://www.alchemy-music.com
“A continuación un recetario para multiplicar por 10 los usuarios de tu programa:”
“Next a recipe book to multiply by 10 the users of your program:”
> My arguement is that if there isn’t an
> RPM/binary/package/port for the software
> you need–MAKE IT YOURSELF.
Is that easier than having the developer provide both binary and source packages? Having source is good, but having source and binary gives even more choice. Sometimes you are in a hurry and need to get thing working as soon as you can. Even when you are not hurry, compiling mysql for the 1000th time can be boring, especially if you are not looking to get any particular advantages.
Methinks the author didn’t even go far enough. All the current linux packaging systems are great for geeks, but not for ordinary folks. We need something like the Windows installer. Also, having /usr/bin in one million places is a waste of useful time, and makes life unncecessarily difficult for both the dist companies and everybody else. Hope things get better soon.
In order for Linux to make any break-out for the average user, there must be many things in place and two of them are the easiest install imaginable for the OS and bundled software and a way to get and install more software in the easiest imaginable fashion. I don’t know what the answer is – I mean with regard to free software and companies making money from it in order to distribute it and make a profit and stay in business. I don’t know the answer, as I said, but somehow, some way, everyone’s going to have to get together and agree, if this is to happen. Hmmm, perhaps a non-profit organization, to insure that people creating free software are not getting screwed by others making money from it.
The ordinary user should be using plain-vanilla Mandrake, SuSe or one of the new windows-like distros (ELX, Lycoris etc). Most of them come with nice GUI installers and tons of easily installable software to play with.
Users that want to try every little application there is, are not ordinary users and should pick a distro such as Red Hat or Gentoo.
Free software will benefit the most if developers work on fixing the bugs and improving usability rather than spending time on packaging. Writing code is what they do best and enjoy.
There was a well argued case in this site a while ago for Linux to develop a Mac-like application structure – single monolithic binary with all DLLs/Libs statically linked into the code.
Nothing approaches the ease with which apps are installed on a mac.
I have no idea how easy or hard this would be – but just think – if every binary contained the right Lbs to run – you’d never again get weird dependancy errors after upgrading seemingly unconnected packages.
( that was one of the many things that made me return to windows 2000 3 months after I eradicated it from my main PC.)
For some people the best would be to get their feet on the ground first, then they could compile the rpm’s and put it online.
Desktop dominance by free-open source software only when this people realise that they are always doing things the worst possible way and keeping themselves away from users demands (e.g. for comfortable updates or instalion procedure).
i have both compiled from source and also just grabbed a .rpm and slammed it in to Redhat, and i could not see any better performance from apps compiled from source, so i figure why bother compiling from source which can be time consuming and not allways work 100% of the time, same with .rpm i have installed apps that would not run after installing, atleast with a .rpm i will know right away if it is going to work or not, dependancys are not a big issue with me because i just make a directory and save the desired rpm in it along with whatever other rpms’ are needed to make the app work, then just cd in to this directory and run rpm -iUv *rpm and wham bam thank you mam i have it working…
the only time i compile anymore is when it is necessary for hardware to function (which is almost never)…
not that i want sourcecode to go away, it sure comes in handy when wanting to tweak a feature in some apps, i think it best to have both available side by side so users that want to download can either get both or the one they desire…
I’ve been using Linux, BSD, and Irix for years. I’ve used many different packaging systems, including BSD’s ports, gentoo’s portage, redhat’s RPMs, etc. I don’t like any of them, but that’s not really a problem for me because I prefer source. I like to compile things on my own machines with my own settings. I like being able to easily modify them when they don’t behave the way I want them to. I guess I fit into the developer catagory, but every linux “user” I know isn’t a drooling idiot fresh from windows and most of them prefer source as well. Those who do use binary packages at least know how to build something when binaries aren’t available. I hate the idea of making any linux or unix environment easy for “stupid users”. The learning curve isn’t that steep and it’s pretty damn easy when you know what you’re doing.
As I was reading this article, I thought, “Well obviously you need to have binary distributions to attract normal users.” And then I come back on this forum and see how many people totally missed the point. Perhaps I can make this clearer:
My mom doesn’t know what a compiler is. She doesn’t even understand the difference between a window and an application. There is no way in hell she will ever build any software from source herself. Not even just typing “make install”. It won’t happen.
There was a comment above that hackers just do what they do for fun, and they shouldn’t have to make packages. Of course it’s their choice – it’s a hobby, and the software is free. But it’s also this lack of discipline, lack of responsibility to users that comes with paid software, etc. that prevents a lot (but not all) free software from coming out half baked. Whether they skimp on docs, or testing, or binary packages, these kinds of corner-cutting (which obviously are their right) seriously damage the overall quality of the release. Which is a shame, because a half hour to make an rpm is nothing compared to how long they spent writing the software.
Do you realize how many it takes to install things from source?? If I had to ‘clone’ my linux installation I could take more than 3 days! (ie install a ‘standard’ distro, find what is missing, download the source code, check the dependencies manually and recompile, install).
Luckily, I found ‘standard’ distrib that cover 95% of me needs (install time=15 minutes) and the last 5% takes days!
But as usual, linux users don’t see the problem
Regards,
Guillaume
Remember, If Linux will have success on the Desktop, Aunt Maretha, 75years old and no preveous computer experiance, must be able to install and run the software iand think it was easy. Any otherinstall experiance for her, and you have lost her to Windows. This is where the real growth potential for Desktop computing is. People who already use computers are your potential developers. People who have never done more than use an ATM at the bank are your potential users. This is the market that M$ hasn’t cracked. If the Linux os and sofrware are simple enough for Aunt Martha, than Linux will be the dominant OS. If not ….. We ate right back where we started …. a bunch of geeks playing with their toys.
thats a good point. the unfortunate part about the current linux situation is that i think a lot of people DO understand what needs to be done, but people are selfish and don’t really care for the needs of future users or cannot be bothered to put in the extra effort to improve other’s user experience. this attitude will criple the hope of linux making progress in the desktop world…
you’re right. i don’t think anything really compares to how simple and efficent installs are for mac os. if linux could adopt such a method, i think linux would gain much better desktop acceptance. lets hope that developers work closer together and get some sort of unified system for how applications are installed…
[QUOTE] Remember, If Linux will have success on the Desktop, Aunt Maretha, 75years old and no preveous computer experiance, must be able to install and run the software iand think it was easy[/QUOTE]
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my mother is approxamitly 75 years old and she could not install either Linux or Windoze, for most people that are computer challenged it does not matter if it is LInux or Windoze, they can not install it or configure it, these things are just beond their scope, i have my mother using Linux with KDE after she got tired of Windoze BSODs,illegal operations and other windoze flaws, she is quite happy with Linux using Mozilla for surfing the internet and the email client too, i also have Gnumeric spreadsheet she uses to keep her checkbook balanced…
I’ve been a linux user for a while, and I always end up rebooting back into windows. I do run linux on my small personal server, but for a desktop, it *still* isn’t close to cutting it.
One of my biggest problems is package installation. As a developer, I hate creating them (there are so many different ways to screw them up and not create an rpm that will work everywhere). As an end user, I hate installing them. You have no configuration options, no choice on where they live, and no freedom. Amazing for the ‘free’ movements.
I think tools like ‘checkinstall’ are where this linux installation mess needs to go. There’s no reason why the developers can’t just distribute a tarball with configuration options (automatically generated from ./configure –help perhaps) and how to compile and install (make and make install). The end user should have a program that they can run, i.e. the ‘installer’, that would present the options in a usable fashion (for the cli geeks, command line flags. For the gui newbies, a dialog with options). Then, after the configuration has been established, something like checkinstall could install the application and automatically create the rpm (or deb or slack or whatever) so that the uninstall can happen, and so that dependencies are in the package database.
This could even work with binary tarballs.
Why doesn’t something like this exist yet? Who knows. It’s a shame I don’t have the time to work on all of these broken things…
Methinks the author didn’t even go far enough. All the current linux packaging systems are great for geeks, but not for ordinary folks. We need something like the Windows installer. Also, having /usr/bin in one million places is a waste of useful time, and makes life unncecessarily difficult for both the dist companies and everybody else. Hope things get better soon.
Actually, an easy to use front end to the systems available would be enough. Place some hacks, like if the user is installing from CD, it would find other packages on the CD and index it, and use the packages to fulfil the dependancies. A front end like rpminst in mandrake would be nice, except there is a lot of jargon used. Without the jargon, written using Qt… 🙂
my mother is approxamitly 75 years old and she could not install either Linux or Windoze, for most people that are computer challenged it does not matter if it is LInux or Windoze, they can not install it or configure it, these things are just beond their scope, i have my mother using Linux with KDE after she got tired of Windoze BSODs,illegal operations and other windoze flaws, she is quite happy with Linux using Mozilla for surfing the internet and the email client too, i also have Gnumeric spreadsheet she uses to keep her checkbook balanced…
Actually, I would have to agree with this. If you set up a system properly for someone else, install stuff that fulfil their needs, they could use it. But what about the Joe In The Street coming home with his new Compaq?
Also, the BSODs, and illegal operations are no longer there in the latest Windows release, XP. Mainly because Windows XP isn’t a hacked mishmash of 16-bit and 32-bit code and many languages mishmashed so badly… oh you get what I mean.
As opposed to many it seems, i dont think the developer should bother with the packages. Which distro should they support? What version? which platform? Please, let the distros create the packages themselves. It is not the job of the developer to figure out how every distro out there does things and then try to build a package for it.
Instead let the developer do what he is best at, write code. If the people making the distributions think the program is any good, then they should package it.
And yes, i am a developer, and i dont know how rpms or debs are created, and i dont want to learn it either.
There was a well argued case in this site a while ago for Linux to develop a Mac-like application structure – single monolithic binary with all DLLs/Libs statically linked into the code.
And here are my arguments as to why this is a horrible idea.
Disk space. A statically compiled program takes up the space of the program itself and all the library functions it uses.
Memory consumption. Statically programs dont share code, each program will load all of their libraries. As it is now they only have to load each library once.
Upgrading. Right now you can update each library separately when a security hole is closed, or a bug fixed. If you statically link then you need to update every program that use that library.
So while im sure you can come with good arguments as to why static linking would be nice, it just aint gonna happen.