Ubuntu To Get Its Own Package Format, App Installer

[intellivision]

Similiar to my feelings about the GPL. As a software developer that needs money to pay my rent, pay for my lunch and so on, I hate the GPL. It's retarded in being infectious. Sure, you can sell your software but only one person will purchase it and can then rename it, put it on a website, and sell it for 1/4 of the price.

As a user, I love the GPL because it gives me the ability to do anything with it.

Is it normal to be so split about such things?

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.

[madjr]

After re-reading what I wrote in here, I've realized that I'm essentially spreading FUD. Let me just add a footnote to make a point absolutely clear: I am merely speculating on what this installer might be capable of, and what might happen. By no means am I trying to give people the impression that things absolutely will turn out the way I write in that post.

Actually you were right with your original post.

The current systems are full of limitations: http://0install.net/comparison.html

Thus why many projects have tried to improve the situation, but is now that a big distro is adopting such features, in order to better compete and take marketshare away from the main OSs.

Ubuntu in particular needs to separate core from apps:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1246

Of course we need to help keep users within a centralized apps market in order for them to stay as secure as possible, but people keep going out to get 3rd party PPAs, etc. which can be a security risk too, so there's no secure situation right now either, just lots of fragmentation and user frustration with not being able to update apps without a command line that can usually break other software and replace libraries/dependencies. So this is to help with that.

Lots of trolls may say that ubuntu doesnt need or worse like its going to kill linux or something and that's BS.

[Serge]

I remember seeing a reference to a survey about a year or two ago that said that people being confused with package management, with not being able to go to a website and download the installer for some program they want, as being a leading cause for giving up on Linux and going back to Windows. I assume that enabling such functionality would be a goal of this new installer.

Now, I've always felt that a clean, centralized package management system is one of the greatest strong points of the distribution I use (Debian), and do not at all miss the days of having to go download installers from websites.

So yeah, Ubuntu has needed something like this for a long time, I think. I just hope this approach doesn't become so popular that it starts to compete with centralized package management on other distros.

Anyway, yeah, as others have already pointed out in this thread, the implied dependency, the unlisted dependency, will be the Ubuntu base system. I think this might even make it more difficult to port packages to other distros, not easier.

Anyway, developers of proprietary software stand to benefit more from this than developers of open source software. With open source software, the distribution packagers take care of packaging binaries of the program. With proprietary software, the developers themselves have to provide binaries that will run on the target systems. Unfortunately, again, I think only those distributions who are compatible with the base systems that the developers will be packaging for will stand to benefit.

After re-reading what I wrote in here, I've realized that I'm essentially spreading FUD. Let me just add a footnote to make a point absolutely clear: I am merely speculating on what this installer might be capable of, and what might happen. By no means am I trying to give people the impression that things absolutely will turn out the way I write in that post.

[GreatEmerald]

I remember seeing a reference to a survey about a year or two ago that said that people being confused with package management, with not being able to go to a website and download the installer for some program they want, as being a leading cause for giving up on Linux and going back to Windows. I assume that enabling such functionality would be a goal of this new installer.

Now, I've always felt that a clean, centralized package management system is one of the greatest strong points of the distribution I use (Debian), and do not at all miss the days of having to go download installers from websites.

With the current popularity of App Store, Android Market, whatever is on Windows 8 etc., I'm pretty sure that we no longer need installer downloading. Rather, everyone else seem to be shifting towards centralised distribution instead. So it would be a step back. And if it's required by something, even now we have the ability to create such installers - either as RPM/DEB packages, or self-made installers (like fglrx does). No reason to create a yet another package format for this particular problem.

[duby229]

I agree with your description. My problem is, that I don't see how you'd get a large enough batch of people that'd collect money and pay for it. You'd need to have a very interesting/original piece of software. Something 'average' (for example if something has been done already a few times and is available) won't do. Which is bad for me, since I lack the creativity to come up with something that hasn't be done already.

Also I still don't like the idea that someone is able to make money with a complete program I wrote. (if someone is using some source code from me, that's fine by me.) In my eyes the GPL is all about rights of the 'customer' aka the user, the developer has nearly no rights and that's what I'm not comfortable about.

Actually, I disagree, the GPL is about protecting the code. The author of the code can do what he wants with it, but non-authors must abide the GPL. Therefore the code is protected.

[nightmarex]

I remember seeing a reference to a survey about a year or two ago that said that people being confused with package management, with not being able to go to a website and download the installer for some program they want, as being a leading cause for giving up on Linux and going back to Windows. I assume that enabling such functionality would be a goal of this new installer.

Now, I've always felt that a clean, centralized package management system is one of the greatest strong points of the distribution I use (Debian), and do not at all miss the days of having to go download installers from websites.

part 1.) That's what I was afraid of, making idiot "point, click, infect" mentality spill into Linux land... great why the hell do idiots want that?!?!

part 2.) You hit the nail on the head. That's what I love about Linux, and the many different repositories also protect you!

When I said exe's aren't safe I didn't mean the application part of it the self installing download and run .exe that basically made Windows XP the biggest tech repair goldmine in history.

Why?!?! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

[Passereaux]

Hrmph!

Ubuntu development was suppose to benefit all. It is not.

[Vadi]

This is a great idea. .debs are not easy to deal with and there's no graphical tools to help guide you through making one when you just ported your software to Linux.

[Serge]

I remember seeing a reference to a survey about a year or two ago that said that people being confused with package management, with not being able to go to a website and download the installer for some program they want, as being a leading cause for giving up on Linux and going back to Windows. I assume that enabling such functionality would be a goal of this new installer.

Now, I've always felt that a clean, centralized package management system is one of the greatest strong points of the distribution I use (Debian), and do not at all miss the days of having to go download installers from websites.

So yeah, Ubuntu has needed something like this for a long time, I think. I just hope this approach doesn't become so popular that it starts to compete with centralized package management on other distros.

Anyway, yeah, as others have already pointed out in this thread, the implied dependency, the unlisted dependency, will be the Ubuntu base system. I think this might even make it more difficult to port packages to other distros, not easier.

Anyway, developers of proprietary software stand to benefit more from this than developers of open source software. With open source software, the distribution packagers take care of packaging binaries of the program. With proprietary software, the developers themselves have to provide binaries that will run on the target systems. Unfortunately, again, I think only those distributions who are compatible with the base systems that the developers will be packaging for will stand to benefit.

[brosis]

1000? not even in windows or osx I have this problem...


And in Android I like or need to move most of my apps to the SD card you know.

I have seen winsxs grow as large as 90 GiB on 160GiB harddrive. Nearly every application brings its own set of libraries, they are "dynamic" only on paper.
In Linux due to using only one, rarely several versions of libraries, that co-exist in parallel yet for real reasons, the same stack would weight 1-2 GiB.