Windows needs a Linux package manager

Internet News ^ | December 12th | Michael Kerner

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Windows users have a real problem when it comes to updates. Sure they have Microsoft Update and certainly many applications include their own update mechanisms. Yet despite that, there seems to be a problem with Windows users actually updating.

So allow me to make a suggestion. Microsoft (or a really smart ISV) should build a full application manager for Windows, similar to what most Linux distributions do today.

For the non-Linux users out there - what Linux distros typically do is have a package management utility of some sort that pulls updates from a package repository (or repositories). Those updates could be for the core operating system but also could include updates for any application package in a repository. So if for example Mozilla Firefox is updated, you don't necessary have to go to Mozilla to update. Instead if its in your Linux distro's repository when an update is issued you'll get an update as part of your existing unified update process.

Small caveat though - there can sometimes be a delay between the time an application has an update upstream and the time an update actually appears in a particular Linux repository.

Overall though, the general idea of one unified approach through a master application package updating tool is one that in my view keeps Linux users (relatively speaking) up to date (and no pun intended on the old Red Hat Up2date command). Wouldn't that type of system be a good one for Windows too? Wouldn't you rather have one update process instead of many?

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^The WORST thing about Linux for the average user is the package manager and the repository.^^^^^^^^^

That doesn’t make much sense. Your next sentence is the perfect example why.

^^^^^^^^^90% of the stuff available is arcane stuff only a Linux geek would know or understand.^^^^^^^^^^

Which is precisely what makes a repository so powerful. You don’t need to know what the arcane stuff is or does. Just click the little button that says “update now” and let it do what it does.

^^^^^^^^^^^Honestly, how many regular users are going to install libgalago-gtk-dev?^^^^^^^^^^^^

None. And they never will. Thank the repository.

^^^^^^^^^^^Yet it’s right there among tens of thousands of choices.^^^^^^^^^^

So? Who cares? Have you ever watched the file names that get installed when you install Firefox on your computer? Do you ever pay attention nor care about the files that get installed as you run windows update? Or watch the file names that get installed from an apple .pkg? Do you really think people freak out and panic if they see a new update marked ACTIVEX DLL or COM or OLE or anything else in their MS update window?

Nobody ever does any of that. So why would they do differently for linux? They wouldn’t. All they’d do is click the little ‘update’ button.

There are good reasons/counter reasons on this argument, but what you’ve presented isn’t one of them. You’ve set a bar for one thing that doesn’t exist on another.

[antiRepublicrat]

Which is precisely what makes a repository so powerful. You don’t need to know what the arcane stuff is or does. Just click the little button that says “update now” and let it do what it does.

The update now is fine, it's finding new things to install that sucks. I was on Ubuntu browing for things I might want to install and I had to wade through thousands of arcane entries. Imagine a newbie exposed to that.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Nobody relies on commandlines anymore unless they wish to; self imposed. One is the linux way, one is the windows way.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^^The update now is fine, it’s finding new things to install that sucks.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So you go to synaptics and you search for “photoshop” to find “Gimp” in the search bar.

Or “illustrator” for “scribus”.

I’m not saying that either app is better or even on par to the former. What I’m saying is that what’s in the description of said apps helps during the searches.

^^^^^^^^I was on Ubuntu browing for things I might want to install and I had to wade through thousands of arcane entries. Imagine a newbie exposed to that.^^^^^^^^^^

As opposed to searching the entire WWW for some kind of freeware you were told about by a friend?

Having a repository would limit your searches to only valid packages as opposed to whole WWW searches. How many hundreds of thousands of different types of freeware out there that you’d have to download one by one until you found the correct one?

[antiRepublicrat]

If you’re going to do it, do it right.

If Ubuntu is being marketed as the Linux even your grandmother can love, then make it simple. Filter out libraries, dev kits, tools, etc., and leave the likes of Gimp and OpenOffice neatly in their uncluttered categories of graphics and office applications. Grandma doesn’t need to see Wireshark(Ethereal) and Nmap among her options for network stuff — the most popular newbie-level browsers, email clients, IM clients and the like will probably do (she probably doesn’t want to see Lynx as a browser choice because that’s not what a ‘browser’ is to a newbie).

I know you know Linux, but you’re showing one of the big problems with Linux — not much thought to usability for the common man. Too many choices can be worse than too few choices.

[antiRepublicrat]

The difference is that the Linux way can update all of the apps on your system, if you got them all from the repository.

But as far as anything from Apple goes, I just see a bouncing ball on my OS X dock and know it's time to check out what's new by clicking on it. The I get the Apple version, which I must say is the nicest of the three:

[ShadowAce]

Guys, Linux is NOT Windows--it shouldn't act like it.

[Big Giant Head]

I know you know Linux, but you’re showing one of the big problems with Linux — not much thought to usability for the common man. Too many choices can be worse than too few choices.

It's a problem not for the commom man, but for the common Windows-trained. Linux isn't Windows, and most scare easily because it's somewhat different.

Most popular Linux distributions are fully usable desktops once loaded, complete with office software, photo editors, CD and DVD burning software, and on and on. A person could work a long time without downloading anything. But then if they want, it's easy to find stuff in the repository with a simple search. The arguments against Linux are evaporating daily.

My BIGGEST beef with LInux is the failure to recognize some USB wireless adapters. Like my Netgear ones. Windows excels here. I have a half dozen of these devices that I can't use in LInux. I jsut installed Suse 11.1 today on one machine, with the latest kernel, latest KDE, blah, blah, and the wireless USB adapter doesn't work.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^Filter out libraries, dev kits, tools, etc.^^^^^^^^^^^

You mean like........ keyboard firmware update?

In both cases, the update app is going to tell you exactly what stuff does. But in both cases(the name as well as the description) I don’t see many people paying attention. “oh, it needs to be updated, ok. *CLICK*”

^^^^^^^^^I know you know Linux^^^^^^^^^

Not as much as I probably should. My use habits aren’t all that different from when I used to use windows. Save antivirus and specific application differences.

^^^^^^^^^^^Too many choices can be worse than too few choices.^^^^^^^^^^

You’re turning this into an anti linux rant. You’re forgetting that the whole point of the thread is about having a repository for macs, and a suppository for windows. :-)

It remains a good idea. The pic in your next post is what I mean..............

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^The difference is that the Linux way can update all of the apps on your system, if you got them all from the repository.^^^^^^^^^

Of course, if that’s what you choose. Having repositories for mac and windows systems would only make it easier for them as well.

Look at the picture you yourself provided.

Consider that instead of only four choices, you had a 5th. Firefox. And a 6th. Adobe acrobat. And a 7th. Photoshop. And 8th, 9th, and on and on.(assuming that every one of these apps needed an update at the same time) Depending on how many apps you had on your computer(and your update timeframes), you could have hundreds of things that need updating.

^^^^^^^^^^But as far as anything from Apple goes, I just see a bouncing ball on my OS X dock and know it’s time to check out what’s new by clicking on it.^^^^^^^^^^^

So what? Any modern linux system does the same. I know that YAST did when I was on SuSE, and so did PcLOS when I used it. Fedora did that earlier this morning.

But I had everything updated, not just OS/Apple specifics.

If you want anything else updated, you have to go track it down manually then download them one by one.

MacOS probably wouldn’t benefit as much from a repository system as much as Windows would. Just ask anybody who’s found themselves stuck in dll hell.

Have you ever had problems with rogue DLLs?

[antiRepublicrat]

MacOS probably wouldn’t benefit as much from a repository system as much as Windows would.

It has one, called MacPorts. That's not for all the software, just what you download through MacPorts (like just what you download through your Linux package manager), and there are a few thousand open source titles available.

[dan1123]

Boy, I think you could become rich and famous (well, famous anyhow) if you’d write a tutorial on how to add stuff to Linux. Everyone I know who tries ends up downloading something to somewhere, and that’s the end of it. I struggle with it too, and the prevailing attitude on Linux sites is “figure it out, dumbass, you’re not in Windows-land any more”.

Not anymore:

[dan1123]

The update now is fine, it's finding new things to install that sucks. I was on Ubuntu browing for things I might want to install and I had to wade through thousands of arcane entries.

See post #52

[AFreeBird]

It would also help if you didn't have to reboot two dozen times when you install/update software. The ONLY time that's required on Linux, is for a kernel update.

[Stentor]

Funny you should post that. I just clicked on my little unlocked padlock and downloaded and installed the Firefox 3.0.5 update among other things about which I have no clue.

[PAR35]

Thanks, I may give that version a try. Except for the wireless issue, I like Puppy for its quick boot and ease of use (and lack of need to risk permanent changes to the machine). I occasionally boot from Ubuntu on CD, and it doesn’t find the wireless either. I don’t know if Xubuntu will be any better, but for the price of a blank CD, it’s worth a try.

[sionnsar]

I remember looking at Puppy and deciding not to try, but I forget why. It may have been that it was a bit too heavyweight for the target machine -- which as admittedly pretty light.

I remember putting DSL on my old P90 workstation (the first workstation from my current employer) and even that was slow...

I've been tempted to put Xubuntu on this machine (it's mostly old hardware too), but I've become rather attached to KDE.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

You were right. I was wrong.

This past weekend I set up my beloved SAL9000 home PC with a dual boot to WinXP and Linux Mint 6.0.
Holy crap, what an OS Mint is. I've been using Mepis on my laptop and Mint blows Mepis away.

Updating software packages and browsing for new ones is a breeze with the Mint Software Manager. Synaptic is good but the native Mint Software Manager is more intuitive and does the job in a very Winders-like fashion.

Plus, Compiz is The Bomb.
Now, there are still things that XP does better, but Linux Mint is so bloody fast on my Dual Core PC and I'll be using it for most of my PC time from here on out.

Thanks for the nudge in the right direction.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

-————You were right. I was wrong.——————

Whoa, you cant say stuff like that to me! Head........ Gonna......... EXPLODE!

:-)

-———Thanks for the nudge in the right direction.-————

That’s all I really asked for. It’s not like it cost you any money.

Welcome to the linux world. :-)

Give it time, you’ll start to dislike the old MS ways once new habits set in.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

It’s not like it cost you any money.

Actually, it cost me $7.58.

My system has two drives...the boot drive is a 160Gb SATA and the other is a 250Gb IDE which used to be my old boot drive in a previous system.
I bought this current PC because the Gigabyte MB had an IDE port I could slave my 250Gb drive on to.
The problem is, that IDE port is seen as channel 0 and the first SATA port is seen as channel 1. Windows doesn't care as long as the boot flag is set properly and the C:\drive is a primary partition.
When I installed Mint and told it to place GRUB on sdb2 Linux partition and NOT the MBR, then created the bin file for boot.ini to look for, GRUB wouldn't load because the boot drive isn't technically the first drive. When I unplug the IDE drive and reinstall the same way but specify sda2 as the target for GRUB, all works great.

So, I went to eBay and bought an IDE to SATA adapter to go on the back of the 250Gb drive so I can plug it in to the SATA port that is channel 2....after the boot drive on channel 1. I may have to reinstall or do some gyrations with GRUB and /etc/fstab but more than likely it will work at first boot.

So....$7.58 for an adapter and of course, $1.00 for the CD media. Still a bargain at 10 times the price.