On 08/10/2011 01:05 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:53:41 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> "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.
>
> Well, technically, "Linux" is the kernel.  GNU/Linux is the system, and a
> distribution is GNU/Linux + applications.

Strictly speaking, that is of course true. However, that's not what is 
usually meant in common usage.

>> See, to some of us "a hundred bucks" is actually quite a lot of money.
>
> Well, yes, and that was my point to my friend.

This is something Microsoft has always historically not seemed to 
understand.

>> 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.
>
> If you install a GNOME application, you're using the GNOME libraries (a
> key part of the window manager) and GTK+ widgets.

I understand /why/ this happens. It's just frustrating, is all. I don't 
see why I should need to install Samba. Why can't I just install, you 
know, the GTK+ widgets? It seems to me that Linux dependency chains are 
just /way/ too coarse.

>> I've never had software break my PC so badly that reinstalling was the
>> only way to get it to work again.
>
> Same here with Linux.  In fact, upgrading my laptop to openSUSE 12.1 beta
> 1 right now.  My choice, and I may take it back to 11.4 as I need it
> working on Tuesday-Friday next week.

OK, that's astonishing. Every attempt I've never made at upgrading an 
existing Linux install from one distro release to another has /always/ 
ended in massive breakage, usually to the point that when I boot the 
system the kernel just panics and stops. You would have thought clicking 
"upgrade now" and waiting for the progress bar to finish would work, but 
noooo...

>>> 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/...
>
> Well, no, you wouldn't be, because they'd be in the actual program.  But
> then you get into poor code reuse and duplication of shareable code,
> which eats up disk space.

Yeah, there's a down-side too.

Really, I'd just be happier if I could install just the functionallity 
that's strictly necessary, rather than installing everything even 
remotely related. Linux package manages seem to do a really poor job of 
dependency management. (Don't get me started on when one random program 
decides it wants a different version of the Linux kernel or something...)

Still, the problem escalates to a whole new level if you try to install 
something /not/ available from your distro's package manager. Everybody 
raves about how great it is that you can install everything from a big 
old list. But you can't, of course. There will be packages that aren't 
in the list.

Under Windows, if you want to install something, you just download it 
and install it. Under Linux, you probably have to download a tarball, 
work out how to unzip and untar it, figure out where the "install me 
now" script is, and then watch as it directs you to install a different 
version of gcc, asks where the kernel header files are, tries to 
auto-detect the stuff it needs... It almost never works. To the point 
where which Linux I use on my VM depends mostly on which one has VMware 
driver packages provided.

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

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