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Petreley On Simplifying Software Installation for Linux
markcappel writes "RAM, bandwidth, and disk space are cheap while system administrator time is expensive. That's the basis for Nicholas Petreley's 3,250-word outline for making Linux software installation painless and cross-distro." The summary paragraph gives some hint as to why this isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
Static linking might be useful as a workaround for the more esoteric distros, but it has its problems. For one, if you statically link your application then anytime there's a security fix or change to the linked library you'll need to recompile the application, not just upgrade the library. This would probably cost more in administration time than upgrading a single library since multiple applications may be dependent on the one library.
Place user applications in their own directories
This single rule alone would eliminate most of the problems. It enables fallback to manual package management, it resolves library conflicts, it avoids stale files after uninstallation and it prevents damaging the system which can be caused by overwriting files during installation and subsequently removing files during uninstallation.
The first obstacle to overcome is the bad attitude many linux users have that if something is easy to install, or easy to use, it is therefore bad.
./configure
As I see it, many would like to keep the learning curve very, very steep and high to maintain their exclusivity and "leetness" if you will.
For instance, the post above mine displays the ignorant attitude that "easy to install" by definition equals "unstable software" and has only a jab at MS to cite as a reference.
That's truly sad (though that may just be a symptom of being a slashdot reader.)
As I see it, not everyone finds:
make
make install
to be intuitive, much less easy, never mind what happens if you get compiler errors, or your build environment isn't the one the package wants *cough*mplayer*cough*, or if you even have said development environment.
Nor does it mean the software is any more stable. Could be just as shitty. _That_ is a matter of the developer of the program, not the install process.
Thats the reason windows servers are more vulnerable to attacks, because they give you the idea that its easy to mantain them... Its the same thing saying that you dont need any pilot on an airplane (and that you can put there anyone) if you make a good autopilot engine... We need more knowledge in system administration, not more automatisms.
One of the drawbacks of being so open is politics. In open source, a lot of times a dictatorship is the most efficient way to get things done. Not everyone deserves a say... only the people who are actually doing the coding! (Great job Mozilla in trying to be less democratic. Some of the "bug battles" were getting out of hand.)
Use Debian and apt-get. No, seriously, could it be much easier?
--sdem
The complaints are, almost entirely, about libraries. But there's already a robust mechanism for determining that a library dependency is satisfied - the SONAME defines its binary compatibility. So if stuff is breaking, it's because library authors are changing binary compatibility without changing the SONAME. How about we just get library authors to stop breaking stuff?
Etc...
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
This is typically a result of a technique known as 'skimming the documentation' and 'thinking you know how to do it yourself'.
People are too quick to blame the distribution (any distribution, even Debian) when something goes wrong.</rant>
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
The trouble with Linux isn't the installation. That procedure should remain somewhat esoteric (else we find ourselves plagued by every Windows user out there who's ever run regedit and thinks he's a sysadmin). The trouble is in package installation, upkeep, and maintainance. With Gentoo, keeping your system up to date with security/critical updates and new features is a breeze. It's so simple and automated, you could set it up as a cron job if it struck your fancy.
"Insightful" my ass.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
I know DLL Hell has become an anti-Windows buzzword, but frankly I've not seen the issue at all since the Win3.1 era (and not often then), not by lack of opportunity -- my WinBoxen wind up loaded to the gills with software from every era, and usually multiple versions of the same programs to boot. My clients install all sorts of random crap, and they don't get any version conflicts either.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yeah, the worst offenders were under windows 3.1, that's true, but because of the mix of apps our users install, we still see it occassionally. They like older versions of WordPerfect, like 6.0, 6.1 and some old proprietary research apps that weren't well written. Because they are still in use, we still see problems now and again. But not nearly as bad as we used to. "Ok, just remember that you always have to start WordPerfect 6.1 *before* you start Eudora 3.0, otherwise WP won't work right." And even now WP 8 and MS Office don't play well together, and you can't have WP and 10 on at the same time either.
Yeah. Ok. You just keep telling yourself that.
What I know is that Gentoo is perma-beta software. When the hell are they going to stop putting updates in the main release and make it possible to get security-only updates as a default?
The other day I did an emerge -u world and an application I'd just installed the day before broke. With an error message that my current version of the nvidia drivers wasn't current enough, which they were, no less.
And this is common. My entire KDE system broke. And kept getting more and more broken over time. dvd::rip also has gotten more broken over time. Not that I want to see Gentoo go as far off the stability deep-end as Debian (where your stable machines are usually running software that was released forever ago). But it would be nice to be able to filter all non-security updates, on the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" principle.
I do not have a signature
Linux is better than Windows because it's so complex and difficult to use?
/. can be. One day they are making out a bug in IE that crashes the browser to be a HUGE deal. Something that just about has to be purposely coded and would take 2 seconds out of your day to relaunch the window if you did run across a site with the code.
/. start focusing on their own hurdles instead of beating to death every little issue that pops up with Windows. Alternately I would like to see more than the handful of truly devoted Linux users admit, or even just realize, that Linux is far from perfect.
/., those vocal zealots have become the voice of the Linux community.
It's funny how hypocritical the crowd here on
Two seconds was a huge amount of time in the average Linux user's day yesterday, but today, hours and hours spent installing software is but a small price to pay.
I know I am oversimplifying this, I'm doing it on purpose to make a point. When the slightest problem is found with Windows, Linux users will type for hours telling how damaging it is and how it is just another reason not to use Windows. However, when a HUGE flaw in the very foundation of Linux is brought into discussion, it is trivialized to the point that the common concensus is that there is no problem at all.
Blind loyalty does no good for anyone but a dictator. Windows isn't the perfect OS, X isn't the perfect OS, and niether is Linux the perfect OS. Each has advantages and disadvantages. However, if you only focus on the advantages and do nothing to improve the disadvantages, or even admit they exist, they will always exist.
I'm gonna be honest here, I couldn't care less how long it takes to install something in Linux. I'm not posting this in hopes that the Linux Community will come together and work on solving the biggest problems facing Linux. I don't use Linux, probably never will, but I have tried it a couple times in the past. To me, Linux isn't even close to an alternative to XP and X (both of which I use daily). I feel Linux has years of catching up to do before I would even consider using it for anything but a web server.
I'm posting this for two reasons. Primarily, because I would like to see Linux users on
This might sound like flames to many slashdotters here, but that's only because I'm not slamming Windows as a creation of satan while singing the praises of Linux as a gift from the gods. If you really take the time to read what I've said with an open mind you will see I have said nothing defamatory about Linux, and in fact everything I have said would benefit Linux if people would take it to heart. Too many Linux users have become zealots and, at least here on
As proof, I offer this entire thread into evidence. The complexity of installing apps on Linux is quite probably the very largest single problem holding Linux back as a mainstream OS. As a computer user that started on the Commodore 64 and used UNIX in college as a CS major, I can testify that the main reason I wiped the Linux partition mere hours after installing both of the times that I tried it was the complexity of installing even the most basic of apps. However, if you read through this entire thread you will see that the majority of replies deny this problem even exists.
It has nothing to do with my "eliteness", it has to do with the readiness of the general populous for something as architecturally advanced as Linux.
What will (mark my words; will happen is that people will start logging in as root all the time - for ease of use - and Linux on the desktop will come to a screaming halt as trojan after trojan anhialates desktops all over the world.
I work in a retail environment, I've worked in educational settings. I've dealt with consumers, high school students, elementary school students, and people who are qualified to teach same, and I wouldn't trust the majority of them to be functional on a Linux desktop, partly because they can barely figure out a Windows desktop to save their lives.
Linux, by nature, is more complicated (and powerful) than Windows. The learning curve is steeper and the tolerance for errors (and ability to shoot off one's toes individually and with great precision) is much higher. What do you tell people when their system boots to nothing more than a continuous stream of "LILILILILILILILILILILILILILILILILI", for example? How do they switch from an ATI Radeon to an nVidia GeForce?
Better still, do you pawn [Star|Open]Office on them as a Microsoft Office alternative? Will they understand when web pages tell them their browser is too old/incapable because it's not Internet Explorer?
How do they handle local/root kernel exploits? Up2Date their kernel? Will their system boot afterwards?
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
- Bandwidth. No-one wants to have to take 2-4x as long to download programs.
- Hard-drive space. Even if we all had 40GB hard-drives, no-one wants to waste it reproducing the same information a hundred times. People buy hard-drives to store data, not twenty copies of the same library.
- RAM.Loading two copies of the same library wastes RAM.
- Load-time.Having to load all of the libraries will increase load-time compared to cases where some were already opened (by other apps) and you don't have to load them.
- Consistency.Part of the benefit of having shared libraries is shared behavior. Destroyed if app X uses Qt 2.0 and app Y uses Qt 3.0.
- The Big 3S: Security, Stability, and Speed.Who knwos what insecure, unstable, and poorly performing version of a library each app comes with. And who knows what crappy options it was compiled with. Resolving these issues at one central point can be counted out. You want to deal with any of these issues, you'd have to do it for every application's version of a library. That means doing it many times separately.
The solution to dependency-hell is to design better dependency management. Reverse-dependency management -- so as to remove useless libraries when no-longern needed and avoid bloat -- would also be good. Gentoo is doing pretty well in these categories.On making install process' simple. I think that a graphical installation does not necessarily make things any easier. Anyone here played Descent 2? That installed by a good old-fashioned DOS-installation. And it was not particularly hard to install, even though it was not a GUI-install.
It is also not necessarily a good idea to abstract into oblivion the technical details behind an install. Part of the philosophy behind Gentoo, for example, is to take newbies and turn them into advanced users. I think that a clear well thought-out install guide is a useful thing. Gentoo's install guide is thorough and has virtually no noise. Compare that to the install-guides for Debian, which are affirmative nightmares, filled with irrelevant stuff. Furthermore, a helpful and friendly user-community is always a good way to help new users orient themselves. New users are going to ask questions on forums that advanced users find obvious. That should not be an invitation to say, "RTFM bitch" at the top of your lungs. All of us were newbies at one point, and just because we may have had to learn things the hard way doesn't mean that others should too.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
My issue with Linux is that every time a new version of a library comes out, it breaks all prior apps. (usually)
The response is that compatibility slows progress by locking down the api. This is so short sighted that it is not even funny.
If programmers thought out how their libraries would be used it would be simple to add another call in a newer version. Instead they make short sighted decisions and ruin the use of a shared library.
IMHO any newer version of a library should work better than the previous version and be a 100% replacement.
This would fix a huge chunk of DLL hell and installer issues.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison