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Linux Mint Takes To Forking Some APT Components

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  • Linux Mint Takes To Forking Some APT Components

    Phoronix: Linux Mint Takes To Forking Some APT Components

    The Linux Mint project has at times forked various open-source projects to evolve them on their own such as the Cinnamon desktop starting out as forks of several GNOME 3 components. While their software forks and focus has mostly been at the desktop-level, they are going a bit further down the stack now to develop forks of several APT components that power package management on Debian/Ubuntu systems...

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  • #2
    don't know how apt is made or if there is some math required, but rpm based distros are not so well done and maybe there is some high tech work behind this. But I think that today's world doesn't need C based(or Rust based) math something because todays DevOps space and programmer knowledge becomes more high order languages consumers(and with libraries) therefore something like apt could be school project in proper easy language and not some hard shit but nice program. And nice program is because there is a lot of work behind that, but there could be movement which do some tidy and make this something maybe for packages to be more distilled and prepared for corporate space where AppImage is taking place because build server with public github is not corporate thing but is preferred according Github and github now offer packages. So something is in the air and Canonical is missing that.

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    • #3
      Sweet. Mint has become a safe space for newcomers who just want a sane and mostly gui based distro that just works™.

      Good to know they're dealing with the papercuts and smaller (but important) stuff instead of pursuing the shiny new thing.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by elbar View Post
        something like apt could be school project in proper easy language and not some hard shit but nice program.
        If you think that then go ahead and try it. Package managers have to deal with a lot of different corner cases if you want them to be usable as more than just a toy. Someone could re-write it in Rust but I don't think you'll get rid of the algorithmic complexity. It'll be memory safe and fast but potentially full of logic bugs still. I've noticed this a lot in Rust utilities, they don't always work like the tool they're designed to replace (that's not the languages fault of course).

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        • #5
          Originally posted by ahrs View Post

          If you think that then go ahead and try it. Package managers have to deal with a lot of different corner cases if you want them to be usable as more than just a toy. Someone could re-write it in Rust but I don't think you'll get rid of the algorithmic complexity. It'll be memory safe and fast but potentially full of logic bugs still. I've noticed this a lot in Rust utilities, they don't always work like the tool they're designed to replace (that's not the languages fault of course).
          Yeah, that'd be because the Rust community are mostly interested in making/playing with shiny new toys and don't give a crap if they're making everyone else's lives harder.

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          • #6
            This is a reason not to use Linux Mint. I mean: the team isn't that big, so maintaining something like this is bad security practice. Just like how TDE maintains Qt 3 still and people love to hate on them.

            (I'm not against it, btw, but I imagine comments like these are going to be the norm here.)

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Vistaus View Post
              This is a reason not to use Linux Mint. I mean: the team isn't that big, so maintaining something like this is bad security practice. Just like how TDE maintains Qt 3 still and people love to hate on them.

              (I'm not against it, btw, but I imagine comments like these are going to be the norm here.)
              They're only maintaining something that in their view was already unmaintained. You could use exactly the same argument against Debian and Ubuntu.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Vistaus View Post
                This is a reason not to use Linux Mint. I mean: the team isn't that big, so maintaining something like this is bad security practice. Just like how TDE maintains Qt 3 still and people love to hate on them.

                (I'm not against it, btw, but I imagine comments like these are going to be the norm here.)
                Except Qt is a much larger codebase than these utilities.

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                • #9
                  On one hand, I'm disappointed that the Linux Mint team is forking yet another project. They've forked how many projects now with their tiny team? How are they expected to develop several unique desktops AND maintain like 50 forks of libraries those desktops depend on? They bite off far more than they can chew on the regular and the desktop suffers for it.

                  On the other hand, why were in-use libraries/tools for apt unmaintained? Mint is implying that both Debian and Ubuntu use those unmaintained packages frequently and patch them to keep them working. Why would neither of these larger projects take maintenance of important packages that are crucial to their core packaging framework?

                  My guess is that those packages haven't actually been used in Debian/Ubuntu in a long while, and it's another case of something in Mint being so old that they have to fork yet another thing to keep it working. God forbid they choose to use something upstream for once in their lives. I love cinnamon so much, but it's basically been dead for a decade with very few updates of note because all of their time is spent just keeping it alive by forking and maintaining all the packages it relies on.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Vistaus View Post
                    This is a reason not to use Linux Mint. I mean: the team isn't that big, so maintaining something like this is bad security practice. Just like how TDE maintains Qt 3 still and people love to hate on them.

                    (I'm not against it, btw, but I imagine comments like these are going to be the norm here.)
                    Except that the motivation for this is that these packages were unmaintained.

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