4d ago

Unneeded new distro(s) and their immaturity.

168 comments

Every project eventually makes their own package manager. Its pretty insane if you stop and think about how routinely the package manager is re-invented.
- For real. I don't mind the million distributions, but can we agree on one single package manager?
  
  Where is that comic about standards now that we need it? The one where they create a new standard that is going to solve all the problems, except for now there is just one more standard??
  Edit: https://xkcd.com/927
  
  We don't even need a new standard. Let's just settle for one of the existing ones.
  
  I'm okay with this, as long as it's the one I'm using
  
  And which one is that?
  
  Nix, if it's not obvious from my other posts
  
  I have to check it out.
  
  Every time someone complains, another package manager is created
  
  the number of package managers went up by 1
  
  Sure! As long as it's nixpkgs.
  
  Apt+snap
  
  No
  
  I'm mildly impressed no-ones downvoted me to hell yet.
  
  Your "no-ones" just caused me great internal confusion.
  I just googled noone...
  
  I've definitely missed an apostrophe there.
  
  I'm reporting this for trolling. lol
  
  There are only two options that fix dependency hell. Nix and Guix
  
  Back in 2000 I started using Linux with RedHat (That's what they were teaching us in college then.) and got to know RPMs before the automatic package dependency resolution tools. Then I moved to Ubuntu in 2004 and have been using that since, and even had a job where I built custom Linux distros based on Debian where I had to build DEB packages, so I got to know that system pretty well.
  But, honestly, if there are better package managers out there I wouldn't mind changing if it means we all use the same thing.
  
  I've broken both Fedora and Ubuntu already, so I had to find better solutions. With NixOS I can roll back to a previous revision easily on boot
  
  How do you break Ubuntu?
  
  Upgrade 22 LTS upgrade to Ubuntu 24 LTS failed and I forgot the upgrade didn't succeed when I rebooted. Unlike NixOS, it doesn't roll all the changes back when the upgrade is unsuccessful
  
  Aaah I see. Ok. I can see why Nix appeals so much to you.
  As I said, I need to try it out. I'm gonna download it right now and try it in a VM.
  
  Flatpak it is.
  
  I don't know if Flatpak can cover all the scenarios. It seems to be mostly for Desktop apps. I know Ubuntu was able to have system tools installed with Snaps though. However, having apps installed with their dependencies in one package is neat, but it takes a ton more in storage.
  Flatpak is a great extra layer to have on top of a regular package manager, but I wouldn't use it as a sole package management system.
  
  I think an immutable system package manager like Nix is perfect to supplement Flatpak.
- Not really
  There are only a few mainstream package formats and ultimately you are going to probably be using distro packages or portable formats like Flatpak.

168 comments