>> I've never figured out how to get out of dependency hell in Linux. Like,
>> you ask it to install one tiny application, and it wants to install an
>> entire ecosystem to support that.
>
> In Windows, you have the entire ecosystem to support it.  It's called
> "Windows".

Yeah, that's basically what it comes down to.

"Windows" is a product. You install it, or you don't install it. And 
that's about all there is to it.

"Linux" is a huge soup of different applications and programs written by 
hundreds of people over the course of several decades. There are so many 
features and options. There are a dozen different ways to accomplish 
every task. And every user-level program will use a different one of 
those subsystems, so you have to redundantly install and configure 
almost all of them.

> As a friend of mine who works for Microsoft said when I complained about
> Windows 7's insane use of disk space for 'caching' OS install files and
> the whole MSOCache, "What's the problem?  You can buy a 2 TB drive for
> under a hundred bucks - what's 30 GB of space to cache these install
> files?"

See, to some of us "a hundred bucks" is actually quite a lot of money. 
My current PC has 4 drives in it totalling less than 1 TB all together. 
If I was going to go to all the expensive of buying a terabyte of 
storage, it would be because I want to store a terabyte of *useful 
data*. Not just so that Windows will get out of bed. Sheesh...

> If you want a simple editor, look at nano, vi, or joe.  Small footprint,
> small dependency list.

Yeah, and really awkward to operate.

Of course, it was just an example. It doesn't really matter which 
program you're talking about; if you have KDE and want to run a GNOME 
application (or vice versa), you're going to have to install two entire 
WMs, even though you only ever use one of them.

>> I've never tried to install a Windows application and had to download 8
>> GB of data,
>
> That's because in Windows you have one desktop environment, and one set
> of dependencies.  Choice comes with a cost.  If you don't want the
> choices, use Windows.  Or Mac.

Oddly enough, I do use Windows. (I've never actually seen a physical Mac 
except in a shop.)

>> or had my entire Windows installation completely cease
>> functioning to the point where I have to reinstall.
>
> "Orchid XP v8" - you once said that the "v8" indicated how many times you
> had reinstalled Windows XP.  So I call BS. ;)

I've never had software break my PC so badly that reinstalling was the 
only way to get it to work again. I've had /plenty/ of software refuse 
to uninstall cleanly, or install stuff I didn't want. Now and then I 
usually end up reinstalling Windows just to keep it tidy. But I've never 
been /forced/ to reinstall. It's always been something I decided to do 
voluntarily.

>> About the worst
>> thing that can happen is that you need to install the .NET runtime.
>> (Obviously, this problem is because .NET exists. If we could get rid of
>> that, the problem would go away.)
>
> It seems you'd be happier with statically linked executables.

Well, that way you would only be downloading the libraries that the 
problem actually /uses/...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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