Could Apple's Intel Desktop Threaten Linux?

esavard writes " If Linux enthusiasts don't want Mac OSX on Intel to become a threat for the future of Linux Desktop, they must rethink the concept of Desktop as we know it today. Symphony OS did exactly that and propose some fresh concepts about how a desktop should and should not be. If you want to know more about Symphony OS, a good starting point is a Wikipedia article describing the innovations proposed by this new desktop OS. The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows."

Comments

Re:Beautiful

[pmjordan]

I've thought about this occasionally. I'd agree that a monolithic repository system is not the way to go. It still doesn't solve the problem of being able to just download a piece of software and just being able to install it without problems. Debian fares no better than RPM-based distros in this respect, and installing core packages is no problem on either of the existing distros' architectures.

A solution that seems to make the most sense to me, which nobody seems to have tried yet, is the following:

Don't rely on one big repository (e.g. debian, gentoo, etc.) but also don't make the whole thing file-based like in OSX. Do keep repositories if you want, but in addition to having a bunch of basic repositories, (e.g. Ubuntu vs. Debian Unstable) you also put information not only on what other packages are required, but also how to get those other packages into each package.

For example, this could be done by pointing to a bunch of mirrored URLs that point to some XML data describing the package at that mirror. The installer could pick the most recent version, choose the fastest mirror, whatever.

Additionally, some sort of 'compound packages' would be useful. That way, you can ship rare libraries directly with the application. They may or may not be installed once downloaded, depending if you've already got the same or a newer version of them on your system. This could be especially helpful for systems that don't have internet connectivity. (gasp!)

Sure, it's not perfect, but it beats RPMs (I use SUSE so I experience this myself) and the debian system any day, because you can just go and download packages off the internet and install them, without having to go and hunt for the dependencies yourself. Most likely whoever made the package actually had the necessary libraries installed (and the package system can remember where he got them from!) so all that is needed is to convey that information to the user's system.

The case where it breaks down is of course when all the mirrors eventually die, for example if a package ends up becoming unmaintained. But if it's not been updated for that long, it and its dependencies could be added to the various monolithic repositories. I'm sure organisations would pop up that would keep 'dead' packages around for people to use. The way to combat this would be to have as much redundancy as possible, of course.

I don't know. It might just work better than what we've got at the moment?

~phil