Ubuntu installers?

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 7 Jan 2023 at 00:09, Owen Thomas <owen.paul.thomas at gmail.com> wrote:

> However, it would be excellent if Ubuntu took hold of one way of installing software and eviscerated all the others.

Why?

[1] More choice is good.

[2] If you do not like it, switch to another distro or OS.

[3] Every major OS has multiple ways to install software.

macOS has .app bundles in .dmg disk images, and .pkg for apps that
need to install drivers, _and_ downloadable system updates from Apple.

Windows has .EXE files you download and run, and .MSI Microsoft
Installer bundles, and now app packages from the MS Store. And some
programs don't need to be installed so you copy them where you want
them to live and make it accessible with appropriate permissions -- I
use Taekwindow, for instance, which is like this. It's handy: you
don't need admin rights.

As I have tried to explain, Apt and Snap do different things. Ubuntu
is trying to push forward what Linux can do in terms of resilience,
recovery from errors, ease of use, ease of maintenance, and so on.
That is a good thing, IMHO. It needs to be done.

Snaps are built from .DEBs. They are intimately connected; Snap can't
easily totally replace Apt everywhere.

Basically if any Linux has a chance of going mainstream, it needs to
rival the simplicity of Android or iOS.

You are complaining that stuff is too hard, which is fair, but then
you are complaining about the efforts to make it better, which is not.

> Perhaps maintaining the Software Centre and stopping its forever searches or running them as a background process that can be started and stopped by user instruction would be a good thing. Perhaps just having one CLI package manager - call it "apt" and have all your man pages refer only to that is a good thing.

Are you reading my explanations at all?

> Please keep Ubuntu simple because most people have lives that do not include dealing with the way their OS installs software.

It is as simple as it gets.

If you find installing software too hard, then go buy a Chromebook.
Then you can't, at all, so it stops being an issue.

Or get EndlessOS, which is immutable. You can't install packages or
update or change it. All you can add are Flatpaks.

But if you don't like how things are it seems unreasonable to me to
complain when companies try to make them better.

-- 
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