Ubuntu To Get Its Own Package Format, App Installer

[Nille]

Those runtimes are actually dynamic - .net, msvc, xna and directx are examples of the few widely used dynamic libs on windows. Why Steam for windows installs them with every game is beyond me (maybe for some kind of additional sandboxing?).

Because Steam doesn't care if it already installed. Most Setups check if the Runtimes are installed and new enough for there needs and skip an new installation.

[zoomblab]

You can release under the GPL, then only offer the source code i.e. no binaries.
Won't stop some determined people, but it will stop a lot. They do the same with Ardour.

That won't work. The distributions will step in and package binaries of your software in their repositories ready to be consumed with just a click. A possible measure against this is maybe to have separate projects for source and binary and trademark your product like Firefox or Chrome. But that also is not very effective, needs loads of money for the trademark + promotion of it, plus people will work around it anyway (e.g. Chrome -> Chromium or Firefox -> Iceweasel).

[Cyber Killer]

That doest mean that you has 10 Runtimes installed.

Those runtimes are actually dynamic - .net, msvc, xna and directx are examples of the few widely used dynamic libs on windows. Why Steam for windows installs them with every game is beyond me (maybe for some kind of additional sandboxing?).

[Nille]

Man, I love reinstalling .NET and the C++ runtime thing every time I install a new game on Steam on Windows.

That doest mean that you has 10 Runtimes installed.

[kaprikawn]

Man, I love reinstalling .NET and the C++ runtime thing every time I install a new game on Steam on Windows.

Static libraries suck.

USB drive to phone connection. There are many adapters that allow for this already.

The only obstacle is support for external USB devices at the operating system level.

Well done, this is possibly the stupidest post I've ever seen. Yeah, let's all plug 3.5" HDDs in a caddy into our phones. And given that the USB connection won't be able to supply enough power, add in a powered USB hub. Then stick all that in our pocket.

[Ray7brian2]

It might be only one more symptom of the NIH-syndrome, but I consider this even a dangerous tactic which most Debian-developers already warned us about.

[Akka]

A well written python app will be just as fast as a C or C++ app unless you optimize the C or C++ app in some way (beyond just best practices). Also python is easier for maintenance so theres a bump in its direction. This flies directly at the same age old argument... do you use a custom written hand tuned algorithm thats fast, but a nightmare to maintain. Or do you go for a slightly slower one, that still gets the job done, thats easier to maintain? Personally, I prefer longterm maintenance benefits from easy to read code.

Do you mean a well written python app like every thing with a semblance of calculation heaviness is done in another language or you do everything in python. Now I'm a pretty shitty python programmer but how do you as example calculate a mandelbrot in python with decent performance. My experince is python is dogslow,some other high level language like most decent jvm and net language is pretty good, sbl, c++ etc is good but not python.
Besides that I'm not completely convinced it's that big difference between programming python and modern c++ anymore. The big pain in the as with c++ is the compilation time

[marciosr]

Glick2

There is a gnome project calls glick2 that provide sandboxed environment to self-contained packages: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTI5NDQ

Why ubuntu don't use it too? Sorry .... NMH syndrome

But to have a second app install method like this is very useful for users and developers.

[Ibidem]

A well written python app will be just as fast as a C or C++ app unless you optimize the C or C++ app in some way (beyond just best practices). Also python is easier for maintenance so theres a bump in its direction. This flies directly at the same age old argument... do you use a custom written hand tuned algorithm thats fast, but a nightmare to maintain. Or do you go for a slightly slower one, that still gets the job done, thats easier to maintain? Personally, I prefer longterm maintenance benefits from easy to read code.

First, there seems to be a common misunderstanding here:
Bloat != slow

Slow speed is often a symptom of bloat, but bloat means "too much code/storage space/memory".
And excess dependencies do factor into that.

wicd is an example of what I mean:
the job it performs is useful, but try installing it on TinyCore.
It needs dbus, gobject, GTK, and Glade plus the python modules, python, python-iniparse, and all the CLI tools you'd use to do the same thing.
wifi-radar needs python, GTK, and python-gtk, plus the CLI tools. There's a big difference there (mainly python-dbus and glade), but...it still is rather high-footprint compared to things like Frisbee (a shell+gtkdialog network manager from Puppy).

[funtastic]

A well written python app will be just as fast as a C or C++ app unless you optimize the C or C++ app in some way (beyond just best practices). Also python is easier for maintenance so theres a bump in its direction. This flies directly at the same age old argument... do you use a custom written hand tuned algorithm thats fast, but a nightmare to maintain. Or do you go for a slightly slower one, that still gets the job done, thats easier to maintain? Personally, I prefer longterm maintenance benefits from easy to read code.

Python is not slightly slower, it is even slow compared to other languages that do not generate machine code: java, c#, javascript... Obviously well written python app is not even close to being as fast as a c or c++ one, you could maybe get close trying to optimize the code, but then it would be unmaintainable.

By the way, for the people that say Canonical is harming the linux ecosystem with this and other decisions. We shouldn't consider ubuntu part of the linux ecosystem anymore. It is not a linux distribution. It is an operating system that it happens to be based on linux, but it could well be based on any other kernel and it wouldn't make a difference (at least that is where it is headed), just like android. Go to the ubuntu main (not the documentation) webpage and try to find the word linux there it is hidden somewhere, but difficult to find.