Ubuntu installers?

[M. Fioretti]

Hi all,

Whether I am right or wrong in this thread is another issue, I may
 be wrong.

But I just realized that maybe the last message below give me a better
opportunity to highlight what I am really talking about, in order to
get answers to THOSE points, not to something else.

The main reason why I, and IIUC Little Girl and others here are not
getting answers to what we are actually answer is here:

On Mon, Jan 09, 2023 14:03:06 PM -0500, Little Girl wrote:
> >Little Girl wrote:
> >> Owen Thomas wrote:
> >> 
> >> > with the hope that users generally will coalesce around Snap as
> >> > the universal format.

the only thing that **USERS** could ever do and will do is "coalesce
around" whatever format DEVELOPERS "coalesce around", if that happens
before hell freezes over. That's the original misunderstanding that
has plagued the FOSS movement since at least the GNU Manifesto. Almost
all users of GNU/Linux are NOT developers or even packagers/
integrators. Not today for sure. We are JUST users, because we could
never be be anything else.

The first problem I and hopefully other USERS are denouncing here is
that DEVELOPERS, not users nor distro maintainers, go each their own
route, each creating their own pet package format and package manager
for their own pet language. Which brings me to the next quotes:

> >snapd is opensource under GPLv3, the code is at [1] and everyone can
> >contribute to help fixing their most glaring issues, feel free ... 
> ...
> I find it ironic that you actually used both of the above statements
> as part of your defense of Snaps.

> > the ubuntu desktop team has grown a snap team that
> >works on desktopish issues of snaps...
> ...
> >so summarizing the above, choice is widening and not shrinking, snaps
> >will not go away but improve with every commit to the code ...

snap, snap, snap... why?

If I missed certain answers, please pass me the corresponding URLs in
the list archive. But MY explicit questions here may all be summed as follows:

1) Why the hell all this talking (only) about snap? It almost seems
done on purpose to ignore the actual issues I've already described in
this thread, after posting a link that apparently nobody bothered to
read.

What I am actually sick and tired about is this: that I have to use,
every year more frequently and in ADDITION to snap, flatpak and what not:
Cpan to install Perl code, pip to install Python code, gem to install
Ruby code, nodejs for JavaScript and so on.

Because of the "have to" part. Almost never it's NOT **my** choice,
it's because the latest STABLE (stable, OK?) version of some package
ONLY comes by CPAN if it's Perl, ONLY by pip if it's Python and so on,
and for USERS this is a cretin annoyance to live with, not choice nor
progress for sure. And it may surely be my fault, but I do not see any
answers to THIS in all the talks about snap vs apt, apt-get etc and
being "free" to choose among THOSE package managers

2) please explain IF and how everything Oli and Liam said about all
the work around snap, and Linux systems going ACID the way of Android
etc... will improve the situation above in any of the ways BELOW,
which are the main if not the ONLY ones I and I'm pretty sure most
other USERS really see and care about:

Will all those snap/ACID efforts magically make developers STOP making
their software only available as pip, gem, cpan etc... packages
because snap will have become much better for THEM?

Will those efforts make it so easy for the Ubuntu MAINTAINERS to
systematically repackage in standard repositories all the stuff that
DEVELOPERS today only ship via pip, gem etc.., to move from this FALSE
freedom and choice:

cpan install A
pip install B
gem install C
npm install D
....

to something sane like:

thingamajig install A B C D

where "install" means "find, download and install by yourself all
those programs, with any dependence they may need"? Of course, as a
user I couldn't care less whether "thingamajig" is snap, apt or
anything else, or how many alternatives to thingamajig would continue
to exist for Ubuntu, or if there were one different thingamajig for
every Linux distro. As long as it's one per distro, it would be OK

Again, whether what I ask is wrong or impossible is another issue. But
I hope, after having been basically forced to retype my whole post
here, at least now it's clear what I am ACTUALLY asking and talking
about..
		     Marco
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