this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2022
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This is an extremely bad argument. “Universal package managers are complicated” yes, true, “so everyone should build from source” no, that’s harder, and more complicated. Package managers were introduced for a reason, one of which is that it’s almost impossible to reliably uninstall software installed from source, not to mention the yak shaving operation involves when there’s dependencies.
The fundamental problem with binary package managers is that they solve the problem of “every program installed is a global variable that potentially affects the operation of the OS in non-trivial ways” by proposing a solution for globally managing any installed software, which necessarily is slow-moving and complicated.
This is not usually how users see things. Installing a web browser is fundamentally a different type of operation than upgrading the version of python used to run system scripts or replacing the window manager. Those are deep, cross-cutting concerns that affect the system and need to be synchronised.
The version of python I use for writing web applications is not a central concern and shouldn’t be treated as one.