tech
Yeah they do. Adding new software is ridiculously easy with Linux - although it also helps that it’s free.
One of the main purposes of a package manager is to handle shared-library conflicts. These are those pesky .dll files in Windows, and .so files in *nix.
But in Unix, unlike Windows, you can get around the problems by configuring the LD_LIBRARY_PATH env variable in a startup script, and then run the script to start the app.
Windows? What’s that? Oh.. it’s that old antiquated operating system that I load in VirtualBox while I’m in Linux in case there’s some odd application that I can’t successfully run under Wine.
With Ubuntu, things have become disgustingly easy.
Well, here’s one Linux user who hosed one of my first installs (Ubuntu) by downloading stuff from its repository.
There are distros with repositories that are well-maintained and which contain only tested and safe software, and there are distros with repositories with the occasional grenade in ‘em.
I wonder which model Microsoft would choose...
Yeah, like the average American wants to be a geeky dork that gets off on configuring their computers all day. No thanks. I’d rather be busy configuring my wife’s bra.
Let there be.....ISUSPM. There, all better now.
No it doesn’t.
The WORST thing about Linux for the average user is the package manager and the repository. 90% of the stuff available is arcane stuff only a Linux geek would know or understand. Honestly, how many regular users are going to install libgalago-gtk-dev? Yet it’s right there among tens of thousands of choices. Too much choice is not good.
Maybe there should be a few modes: user, administrator and developer. Hide most of the stuff for user, show all but dev tools for administrator, and the dev tools for developers. If what a user downloads needs some libraries, install them silently behind the main download. You’ll need a notification like “Support files will be installed with this package” and a non-intrusive button to view a list of the files.
I used to use update expert to update Windows servers, not just the O/S updates but any software that you could build a package for. Now Shavlik bought UE and is killing it off for their own crappy product which I’ve heard they actually approved using UE functions so I’ll probably download it to test it.
Now we use MS WUS, I mean WSUS, it seems to work well for MS products but updating say, Adobe, good luck, if anyone knows how to do it, I’d greatly appreciate it. The other option is SMS or whatever they call it this week.