Ubuntu installers?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2022-12-23 at 16:37 +0100, M. Fioretti wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 08:53:47 AM +1100, Owen Thomas wrote:
> 
> > ... I became jaded and wary of installing software on Ubuntu a long
> > time ago because there appeared to be many competing "package
> > manager" formats, each with their particular pecadillos that made
> > software installation generally depressing.
> 
> welcome to the sorry, sorry state of Linux packaging:
> https://stop.zona-m.net/2022/01/the-sorry-sorry-state-of-linux-packaging/

The above link contains this:
https://stop.zona-m.net//img/xkcd-standards.png

Hi,

I wrote this related to another issue, the invention of new configs such
as dconf in the first place and now xfconf, but it describes the whole
situation of unique missing standards for this and that:

   UNIX --> POSIX --> LSB --> IDIOTIX
   
   LSB wasn't successful, because it didn't end with IX. IDIOTIX does FIX
   this.
   
Another example is systemd. There's nothing wrong with a migration to
another init system, if this init system does it all. For my "main
distro" Arch Linux, that way before Ubuntu migrated completely to
systemd, a discussion started to provide an alternative init system. Not
for those who still complain about systemd for regular installs, but for
those who want to run an embedded system. Now systemd is "matured", but
still doesn't fit all purposes.

One new idea after the other is introduced, but no idea ever becomes
really matured anymore.

Rewriting software completely and dropping backwards compatibility
sometimes makes sense, but it's done excessively nowadays.

Soname does exist. It's possible to stay with an interfaces and to link
against updated shared libraries...

/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1 -> /usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.0
/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1 -> /usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.1
/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1 -> /usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.2

...but instead we way to often get...

/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1 -> /usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.0
/usr/lib/libfoo.so.2 -> /usr/lib/libfoo.so.2.0
/usr/lib/libfoo.so.3 -> /usr/lib/libfoo.so.3.0

...a new incompatible interface with each update.

It started a while back that release candidates of beta versions became
version 1.0. You might remember that a lot of distros dropped the old
working nv open-source NVIDIA driver in favour of the nouveau driver,
bevor the nouveau driver worked with at least 70% of the graphics and at
the same time it was introduced that default GNOME sessions required 3D
support.

Regards,
Ralf