Article discussing the phenomenon of atomic distributions and numerous associated risks and perils for the Linux desktop, including lack of productizatiom, market share, problems with package management, software distribution and would-be software stores, commercial versus community model, trust and security, Google model, major usability regressions over the past decade, fresh fragmentation, monetary factors, bad timing and missing bigger picture, repetition of effort, battle of egos, and still more

Alas, just as we’ve reached some small level of stability, some small level of progress, there’s a good chance all of this effort will have been in vain. What do I mean by this? Well, the Linux world is fragmenting once more, on several levels.

  • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    19 hours ago

    In comparison, take any which Windows exe file, and it will run on pretty much any version of Windows

    except when you need to manually install some msvc dependencies, make sure it’s compatible with other software you have and …

    • entwine@programming.dev
      6·
      18 hours ago

      MSVC redistributable dependencies are also a problem on Windows. If you try to run an app built with a version of the MSVC runtime that’s not installed on Windows, you’ll get an error telling you to install it. Microsoft doesn’t ship all possible versions of that with Windows, so users are on the hook to install it themselves (if it’s a big publisher though, they’ll typically include it as part of a installation wizard, and Steam handles it automatically behind the scenes).

      make sure it’s compatible with other software you have

      Not sure what you mean by this, as wine software is contained within a wine prefix. If you have dependency conflicts within a wine prefix, you can just create a separate one. Apps like Lutris make this easy to do via a GUI, and they even have community sourced installer scripts for well-known software that automates installing dependencies (like MSVC, fonts, or other bullshit you’d normally have to get through something like wine-tricks).