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Deciding On The Future of Linux
A reader writes: The Free Standards Group has posted a request for feedback, now that they have completed LSB 1.2 and li18nux is also finished. Where should they/we go next? "
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If I'm reading this issue correctly, it's the idea of dependancies themselves that are the problem.
I kinda hate having to install 10 or so other programs just to get the intended one to work.
All you debian people will start screaming about 'apt-get' here, but that's not the point. ONE program shouldn't necessarily require the installation of 4-5 other programs, regardless of how the installations are done. Just because your 'apt-get' downloads and installs them for you doesn't mean you're not having to install other packages, you're just not thinking about it. There's still extra bandwidth and diskspace taken up, and more security considerations to consider. Having package X installed to run package Y means I have to be worried about security for 2 packages, even though I only want to use one package. We bitch at MS for this - tying multiple programs to IE - but it often happens in the linux world as well with packages - package X requires package A, B & C be installed. Why can't just the required bits of A, B & C be rolled into package X by the author? Or - heaven forbid - just provide a binary with all the necessary libraries bundled together.
creation science book
Yes, the source is important to open source. Unfortunately it's generally in C. This means that it's much less easy to modify than Java, C# or Python.
So unfortunately, thanks to the legacy technology inherent in KDE and Gnome, we've already lost this battle relative to MS and spurned the only platform that could have competed.