• Consider if you will that the average product would have typically well over 1000 users. So you're having to make a program fit the needs/wants/desires of many within a median range. And some people still don't like that. Hence, forks are created.

• There are large degrees of separation between the common Linux user and someone like Richard Stalman, who is trying to create an entirely free microkernel. (Known as GNU/HURD) I for example prefer open source software because most closed source software either has a cost, or odd snag with it. (Basically, I'm being cheap.)

• Fair to a degree. Let me present you with this: Say I may some software, a monitor gausser. I sell it for 15$, and after 5 years, I discontinue it. People still like it, but I'm no longer offering it. Why should I allow the product to die by stubbornly hoarding the code to it? So many games have been met with such a fate because they had no exit plan.

• Have you considered why, to either end? Especially with digital distribution now the norm, why should companies not build for Linux, even if it is a 'tar.gz, figure out the rest' style archive? If so many things are allegedly incompatible, why do they run in frameworks in Wine?
More pointedly, have you considered the idea of software control? This office suite is now doing something I don't want it to, and I can't do anything about it in closed software, for example. No complaints or calls will do.

• I wasn't able to parse this point as grammatically valid.

• Oh, really? OpenJDK, Chromium, Firefox, WINE, ScummVM, GTK, Raspi, entire design systems & standards, I could keep going.

• I'm not entirely sure what this metaphor means.

Isn't this what AppImage does?

isnt AppImage closer to .msi, at this point?

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Does anybody there want a thread about setting up a firewall (iptables) with ability to blacklist decided applications? Or everybody already knows it

No an appiage is an isolated application with it's dependencies ready to be executed. In other words it's literally an "application image" it can't be used to install things so it's not appropriate for drivers, games and anything that needs system resources.

If you are knowledgeable enough to make that thread, go for it. There's always stuff for you to learn, and *you* might even learn things from the responses to the thread.

(I actually don't know how to do this, but would be interested. I do, however, know about network namespaces.)

They're not virtual machines. They get access to the system resources the same as an installed application would.

Sure, they wouldn't work for drivers or installing software though. But to do that, there would have to be Only One Way that software could be installed on Linux to work across distros and that isn't going to happen.. partly because even if every distro ever agreed and implemented the standard immediately, it wouldn't work on older version and thus "not be fully portable" and because these differences occur for technical reasons

For example, the distro I am helping to make installs software in a very peculiar way due to what it is designed for (transient and extremely lightweight virtual machines which can easily be created and set up fully automatically).

EDIT: I'm actually curious if you'd like the distro I'm working on. Due to how the package manager works, it might tick your "needs to work easily offline" requirement.

So? Don’t really know where you’re going with this?

Yes you are. Being cheap is a bad thing. Who wants to be George Costanza from Seinfeld? If you can afford a decent computer you can affored decent software. I prioritize software on its quality, not on how cheap it is. If it happens to be free, that’s a bonus.
Because it’s your code and your property. Even without source code you can still modify programs and games. Not as much as you could if you had source code but it can still be done. Having the source often isn’t necessary just to get something to work. Simply changing a few dll files is all you need to get a few old games work. Is how gog gets their older games to work. It’s how Fear got patched too.

I don’t really understand what you’re saying here, but I’ll just say the reason companies do make things for Linux is because it’s not profitable.

lol

Those are just open source projects not operating systems. In fact Linux is kernel and not an operating system itself. I like to think of Linux as the Unity engine. Because it’s free, anyone can use it and its’ often used to make tones and tones of crap. Just like Unity.

That free bread is stale and not worth standing on line for, when you can buy freshly baked bread from the bakery. It’s a communism vs capitalism metaphor. Better to buy something good then to get something that’s free and rubbish.

1.) You don't think Linux has amounted to anything? The Internet pretty much runs on Linux. From the switches and routers to the servers, the vast majority of it runs on Linux. I'd say that's something.

2.) There's the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) which isn't tightly controlled by Google. I don't think Android would have ever gained the popularity it has without Google's involvement, but you can run a Google-free Android on your phone. I know, because I do.

And with regards to your bad-bread analogy. Why would I want to pay money for a bloated operating system that spies on me, when I can get a more secure, more performant, more flexible operating system for free?

We're talking about Linux on the desktop. Besides, the NT kernel is also used a lot in non desktop applications. Don't you think it's a little unfair to compare an entire kernel family to a single desktop OS?

I didn't say they were virtual machines I said they were isolated application and they are.


Then how is Linux ever going to make any impact on the desktop if they can't make their minds?

For me to like something it only has to do one thing. Work well.

That was my main reason to switch to open source wherever possible. In the closed source world some company could for example say: here is our new office suite with a new interface (that sucks tremendously). If you don't want it, you may stay with your old version you can't open the documents other users created with the new one and with our next operating system it wouldn't work anyways, so better pay us to hurt your productivity (far fetched example I know...)

In open source this is way less likely to happen and if it does the project probably gets forked. Even if not, at least I didn't pay for it. This doesn't mean there isn't good commercial software or there aren't companies which treat their customers nicely but open source is the safer bet in my experience.

Isolated application that have access to the same files, hardware acceleration etc. that installed applications do.
You said it doesn't work for games or things that "require system resources" (whatever that means, seeing as all applications require system resources), but it does work for those.

It probably won't and it doesn't really matter. I can use Linux how I want. To do what you want would require it turning into a dictatorship like the other big desktop OSs. They don't have to get agreement from 100 distro leaders to do something. The one person at the top commands it. They do something you don't like (like dropping support for your hardware)? Too bad. So sad.

Subjecting Linux to that will take away why people use instead anyway!

This is precisely why I don't like Windows, Excel, SAP, Lotus Notes, systemd, LibreOffice and Gnumeric. They don't work well. I have a spectacular loathing for Excel, but trying to use LibreOffice makes me wish I had Excel instead!

What you described as "work well" (i.e. downloading and installing exe's one-by-one) is super clunky to me, where I can go from nothing to a fully set up and configured installation.. by launching a script I wrote years ago (I have a lot of machines, both physical and virtual. Manually doing it all every time gets rather tedious!).

Even the bash script you showed me was somewhat clunky but it is very easy to follow. This is exactly the sort of trade-off which is why there are so many distros doing their own thing and it is impossible to get them to all do the same thing.

Hell, I can't even get you to stop saying Linux doesn't work unless it is online because it doesn't work offline exactly the way you want it to, even though it works offline fine.

My first experience of it (when Arch Linux adopted it) was it breaking the setup I had at the time, due to not properly replicating multi-monitor behaviour in its wrapper.

The commands for doing the same task during installation and changing running configuration can be different, because you have to do what the systemd command would do manually.

Set up a RAID1 array.
Shut down machine.
Remove one of the drives in the array.
Boot machine.
systemd will then proceed to wait 90 seconds for disk that isn't there (if you are lucky and it doesn't just decide to wait 90 seconds again when they timer runs out).
It then drops you to the recovery shell instead of continuing to boot, negating the point of a RAID1 array (that a drive failure doesn't interrupt).
Failing the drive from the array does not fix this. Good luck finding out where systemd is keeping its reference to this drive.
(I found out this fun bit of behaviour during a convention)

First three things to come to mind anyway (apologies, it's 3am now!)

EDIT: Oh crap, how could I forget the one where if you put in a username that starts with a digit (which is valid), systemd will not launch the process as that user.. but as root instead.

This all sounds logical. But it seems like it'd be less annoying to the user, and more annoying to the sysop/admin. When you're awake tomorrow, can you suggest some alternatives?