I've mounted the original ISO installation media as a local package repository many times on systems with no internet access and had no issues installing whatever dependencies I needed within the confines of that snapshot. If you're looking for updated versions of packages you'll have to go online anyway.

The irony of it all is that Microsoft is also leaning towards and promoting the same "App Store" approach in Win10, where applications packages are stored and installed from an online repository.

Nah, I'm dependent on my spin dynamo ability only ; )
If I don't like the way something work, I can easily replace every single line of code with my own.
To be honest, I have no problems with repos. Quite the opposite, it was Microsoft who made me mad with updates. I had to do everything manually anyway without any serious knowledge what I'm going to install. I can't complain with repos, mans and well documented source code.

I might have done it on Debian a long time ago, but more recently with Mint and RHEL/Scientific Linux. The downside is that you won't get access to *everything*, just the base packages included in the main ISO(s), but that is usually enough.

Debian can also leverage (similarly to Ubuntu or Mint) apt file:/ repositories (declared in sources.list), so it should be quite easy to setup something of the sort once you get the installation ISO(s) mounted.

Steam requires an internet connection to verify your license before installing the software, regardless of whether you needed to transfer the software over the internet or had a backup available locally.
Installing software from a Linux repository doesn't place any restriction on the user. It is simply a way to transfer software from A->B. After it is on your computer you can use it however you like.
The whole point of "DRM-free" is that you can _use_ the software without any restrictions enforced by a higher authority (ie. repeated online checks whether you are legit user). How the software (and its dependencies) is transferred to your computer is totally beside the point.
On WIndows the game and its dependencies are packed together in one installer and transferred in one go to the users computer. On Linux the game is packaged separately from the dependencies and the user will have to transfer the parts independently to his computer. But in both cases: once the software is on your computer, you can use it without further restriction or control schemes.
It is a difference in packaging, yes, and feel free to dislike the way it is handled by most Linux distributions, but likening it to a DRM mechanism is just plain dumb.

I can actually understand that. Half of DRM-Free / game preservation isn't the first download being offline, but the 2nd reinstall onwards. Linux Software Manager's, etc, are needed though simply to avoid the bad old days of programmers telling non programmers "all you need to do is take the source code, then compile...", etc.

I think there's a way to turn Linux repository downloads into a local installer, but then you need to remember to do dependency checking (there's still a large degree of truth that Linux apps never seem to include everything they need with the app itself) and to newbies that then gets more convoluted than the expectation of the Linux equivalent of an installer .exe just bundling required MS Visual C++ 2015 inside the installer. But then maybe that too could simply be a future evolution of Linux Software Managers.

I know I said I wouldn't bring up phones but I don't think I have a choice. See android is based on the Linux kernel and they already figured this out. APK files. Android version of exe is an APK file. They can be used to distributed free or DRM free software. Pirated software is also distributed via hacked APK files. Thing is though I still wouldn't want Android as a Desktop OS, but you know it's the best version of the Linux kernel because it's what everyone is using. But it's not the same as Ubuntu or anything. It's under the control of a massive corporation.
Well yeah that's kind of the problem. With only a few gigabytes of space. I have a collection of updates for Windows that allows to run pretty much everything. With what you're describing I imagine that quite a few games won't work.

Flatpak, Snapcraft, AppImage are attempts at creating something like that, a self-contained applications. To be honest I know next to nothing about them, so I can't really tell anything more...

No it’s not beside the point IT IS THE POINT! The biggest danger of DRM is when it doesn’t work your game doesn’t work. If the server that is out of your control has a hissy fit your game don’t work. Most gamers today aren't bothered by DRM and are happy to just use Steam. But for those of us who understand the vulnerabilities of putting all your eggs in one basket like that there’s go. I use GOG and keep a backup of all my updates so I know that as long as I have electricity I can get my games working.

Expect for the fact if you don’t have direct internet connection it won’t work. You can’t access it from a browser or a second computer. Oh and it won’t let you decided which directory the programs get installed. At anytime it could go offline when your distro gets too old thus not accessible to anyone at all.

Yeah aside from those there are no restrictions whatsoever.

No the point of “DRM-free” is to remove restrictions of distribution and usage. IE backup as much as you want and use as much as you want. They’re are still restrictions in place for GOG games outside of those areas. They’re not completely free for you to do whatever you want with.
I've tried all of them. They're not very good and you could never use them for games.

I don't understand your argument. If GOG's server has a hissy fit, you can't download and play your game either.
If software is sold & distributed digitally then you have to rely on a working internet connection and a working download server to transfer the acquired software and any required dependencies to your PC (at least once).
But that isn't a "linux thing", it affect all software, for linux, for windows, for mac, drm-free or with drm.
If that falls under DRM for you, then you just have a weird definition of "DRM" :p. One that differs very much from how people commonly define it.
tbh I'm still really puzzled what your actual problem is. Downloading the game from GOG via internet is ok, but downloading a linux package via internet is a big problem ?? Either i am missing something or you just have a logic error in your thinking process :?

again, you only need the internet connection once to download the required software to your PC. Same way as GOG requires an internet connection to transfer the game (at least once) to your PC.
not sure which distributions you have have tried, but afaik most of them allow you download packages via browser (or FTP).

that's probably the one and only valid point in your whole tirade ;)

that problem affects all old software when it is no longer actively supported. You think Microsoft still offers .NET installers for Win98 ?

Well, you have quite the imagination :P. Never had the issues you are describing.

Seems to me you're actively trying to find reasons why Linux is not OK for you, but you really don't have to. It's not for everyone or anything in particular, and was never meant to be, unlike other OSes.

Keep using whatever you like most for whatever purpose you have in mind. To some of us that adds up to being Linux sometimes, it's just the way it is.

This is quickly turning into an endless conversation about why certain people are fond of particular color, while others prefer another.

You gotta be kidding right. I listed the reasons in the OP and you still don't get it. As for the Windows updates. Look here's a screen shot of my archive. Yes live is included it's terrible but it's there if you need/want it :O

GOG games need the internet to be downloaded but not to be installed. Steam games need the internet to be downloaded, installed and launched. Linux repository software needs internet to be downloaded installed and launched. I can download game from GOG and it will always work. You can download a bunch of dependencies for a program and use command line to install them. But they will only work with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64 and ONLY with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64. With anything else they are worthless. Do you understand my argument now?


I listed them in my original post. Without a package manager and index (such as APK) which can’t run through browsers you have no way of knowing which out of the millions of deb files you’ll need to make your software work. Do you not think I’ve tried this all before.


You haven’t really refuted my arguments you’ve just failed to understand them..


If you install Windows 98 on an old computer it will still work and you’ll still be able to install programs on it. In fact some games on GOG will still run on Win98 without issues. Such as Unreal Tournament for example. You’ll never get that with Linux.

Man, your post is just full of excreta!
No, it doesn't. I have no idea where you've got this from.

This is your first mistake. Different Linux distributions cater to different types of users. Don't group all distributions together. You'll get conflicting answers that are all correct within their respective niches.If you hate it that much, stay away. Don't waste your time forcing yourself to use a system you hate; don't waste the community's time trying to talk you into liking it.

I use it because I find it to be a far less frustrating system than anything else available to me. I don't push others to use it.This is where you go completely off the rails. First, as above, different distributions work differently. I'm not going to try to refute your individual vague complaints. If you restate them with specificity, I can try.No. If your package manager is at all competent, it can be instructed to download all the packages once, so you can install offline at a later point. People in countries with slow/unreliable Internet get very unhappy when that feature breaks.

Moreover, you are again conflating the package manager of specific distributions with the general idea of "software installation on Linux." To be picky, Linux is just the kernel. It doesn't have repositories, or software updates, or package managers at all. Distributions have those things. Distributions are built on top of Linux (and sometimes other kernels).

I will grant that some packages have a habit of breaking their ABI more often than they should. This is something to complain to the individual upstreams about. Linux distributions generally just pass through the decisions of upstream on that issue.This is at once both your most and least accurate point. It is most accurate in that, yes, some packages do break backward compatibility. It is least accurate in that no, Linux the kernel goes to amazing lengths not to break backward compatibility. Kernel breaks are permitted only when no other option is practical.If the source was released, then you can support it or find someone to support it for you. If the source was not released, you are stuck. How does this differ from Windows software? Windows vendors routinely abandon their old versions. In the case of Windows software, abandoned versions often become difficult or impossible to legally acquire, at any price, even before it becomes impossible to run a copy you may possess. At least with freely released software, you can acquire a copy and make the attempt to make it work again.That sounds like something you should take up with Trine 2's maintainers. They should be using the standard system libraries, not requiring special versions. If they absolutely cannot use the standard libraries, they ought to include the required libraries. Windows vendors are more thorough about bundling libraries, but your problem is fundamentally that the people whose job is to deliver the software to you, working and in good order, did a bad job of it.As above, if the vendor either used standard libraries or arranged to bundle their non-standard libraries, you will be fine. If they did a bad job of delivering the software, then you have a problem. Complain to the people who did their job poorly.Then you retrieve them from the attic. Only truly rare things ever really die off the Internet.It does, because you completely misunderstand DRM. At no point have you posed a scenario where a Linux user needs to ask anyone for permission to run a program that is already functional. Every scenario you posed involves a program which is not yet functional that needs more pieces, yet somehow cannot get them.Without it, we wouldn't have the freedom to waste hours in pointless arguments. Linux distribution are actually better about this than any other system I've dealt with. It's a truly broken distribution that cannot handle installing from local media. You'll need to get into specifics about which distribution screwed this up.
Where else do you expect to install from? Do you want someone to mail you a CD? Again, your problem seems to be specific distributions that either did things poorly or you didn't understand how to do them right. Every distribution I have worked with handles homemade offline install media fine.

That doesn't make any sense. Android is notorious for being out of date and for shipping drivers that are not upstream. The latter makes it unnecessarily difficult to run current software on an Android device, assuming you can get past the obnoxious locked bootloader that the phone vendor installed.

If we judge based purely on popularity, then archaic versions of Windows are necessarily "better" than current because they are widely installed (and in some cases, will remain so due to operator preference). In the case of Windows 10 versus pre-Windows 10, the older ones probably are better, but that's only because Microsoft did such a horrible job with Windows 10. :)