Mastodawn

mystie ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ Jan 1, 2024

nano's old account's rotting corpse

"guys installing apps on linux is way easier all you do is <insert 3 or 4 worded command here>"

we literally have a ton of really polished gui app store apps that act as a frontend for flatpak and binary package managers, did we just forget those existed?

kde discover? mint software manager? gnome software? pop shop? appcenter? thats what you SHOULD be talking about, not this unintuitive command line shit -.-

do you really expect a windows user to install linux for the first time and think "ah yes time to open a terminal" so they can install their favourite web browser? get real. theyre gonna click on the shopping bag

Kat - moving soon Jan 1, 2024

@[email protected] And thats really the thing we should not just focus on, but sell! "Hey you know the microsoft store, and how much it was shit? Imagine if that was good"

Stax the fox Jan 1, 2024

@nano I mean on windows its usually like

Finding the official website, downloading the installer, starting the installer, unselecting the adware, agreeing to its TOS, waiting an eternity until the stuff is installed, finally starting the software

While its possible that you into stuff like missing vcredist stuff etc

While windows user could use something like chocolatey to install and update their software very similar to Linux

Stax the fox Jan 1, 2024

@nano but yeah, i guess that the GUI frontends for the linux package managers are nice for the "mobile users" like those on Android and IOS, as you have a similar experience on there

Marcus Lee Jan 1, 2024

@nano This. I love that we have those now and you can easily install apps from the store like on a phone, but the problem is that it's still not very polished sometimes.

For example, I've used the Gnome store and while it works, sometimes it doesn't give me enough feedback that it's doing things. Like when I click install, it does show me a loading bar after I click it, but it doesn't show the percentage or a progress of how far it has installed. Sometimes if I exit the app's page and go back in again, it just shows the install button again like I've never clicked on it even though it's still doing things in the background.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being nitpicky or maybe my system isn't set up properly somehow, but I kinda feel like it could be more polished in a way.

I apologise for the long rant lol

Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him Jan 1, 2024

I think you totally nail it:

> all you do is <insert 3 or 4 worded command here>

Now describe doing the same with some UI. How many screen shots do you need, to replace those three or four words?

If it only has a UI and no command line, it rather leaves every user stranded on their own. To share, a command line is so much better!

nano's old account's rotting corpse Jan 1, 2024

@dj3ei @Natanox it doesnt need to be described, its intuitive, the words are on the screen, you just have to click on them. the future is now old man

DUVERGIER Claude Jan 2, 2024

@nano @dj3ei @Natanox Not all GUI are intuitive…
Also:
• Packages/snap/… managers changes from one distribution to another.
• The name of the GUI application is often localized.

LisPi Jan 3, 2024

@nano @dj3ei @Natanox You say that, but I interaction with words done properly hasn't ever caught on.

Smalltalk, Lisp Machines, Interlisp and Plan9 all tried and succeeded to varying degrees but they never caught on. McCLIM has similar capacities too.

Joshix Jan 1, 2024

@nano i've always prefered the CLIs, i liked none of the GUI wrappers i've tried
I always try to say to use them, but it always feels wrong to recommend stuff i dislike

@nano @Natanox
It bothers me and causes me anguish that you are completely correct.

@nano i wish i could recommend thse GUI app stores, but things like KDE Discover take time to looooaaaaaaaaaaadddddd

Also it's NOT verbose about flatpak dependencies which absolutely causes confusion

@nano This sounds wrong, but just going to flathub.org and following the instructions feels much less painful

nano's old account's rotting corpse Jan 2, 2024

@Sqaaakoi why does the user ever need to know the dependencies of a flatpak

@nano it isn't about the dependencies themselves, it's about knowing how big they are and why it's taking so long to download

the dependencies are my #1 reason why I avoid flatpak, they're updated too often and are REALLY BIG updates

@nano ah, 2MiB application is really 800MiB of shared dependencies

nano's old account's rotting corpse Jan 2, 2024

@Sqaaakoi flatpak does deduplication, also youre exaggerating really badly

nano's old account's rotting corpse Jan 2, 2024

@Sqaaakoi also, macos app bundles and android apks do the exact same thing

@nano i know i'm exaggerating
i just don't use flatpak enough to make the big dependencies worth it

@nano nvm i'm not exaggerating; NVIDIA driver runtimes are really big for very slightly different versions

Mair Jan 2, 2024

@Sqaaakoi @[email protected] yeah but they just work, and the storage space is normally just available for most people.

800mb is a pretty big exaggeration, normally a flatpak is 2-4 times larger than a traditional package, and it can normally be updated automatically in the background at regular intervals with most desktop environments.

LisPi Jan 3, 2024

@nano @Sqaaakoi To not install a bunch of stuff they don't want.

And/or to give a look to the projects to see if that's something they want on their computer.

@Sqaaakoi @nano It really doesn't take that long to load. Way to exaggerate. And it's also not something non-CLI users are going to even notice because they're typically used to this anyway.

LisPi Jan 3, 2024

@reina @nano @Sqaaakoi Synaptic does take a fuckton of time to load compared to opening a brand new xterm instance and typing "apt install emacs".

It's not even comparable.

I used it for a while.

@lispi314 @nano @Sqaaakoi consider your target audience. I'm not saying that it isn't faster to just download an app from the terminal. I'm sayibg the problem is exaggerated.

@lispi314 @nano @Sqaaakoi For the record, I will download stuff from the terminal too if I already know exactly what I want and how it's spelt. But I would still not suggest the terminal to download stuff to a newbie who's used to Windows or MacOS.

THIS PROFILE IS RETIRED Jan 2, 2024

@nano Not gonna lie, KDE Discover and the Gnome equivalent have always been sort of fancy looking clunkers compared to apt install [program]". Granted I am currently using Debian so of course a single user wouldn't have root access and it becomes baffling as to why MPV isn't installing/downloading. At least the terminal emulator gives one a more visible case of whatever is going on, as a progress bar can only depict so much.

THIS PROFILE IS RETIRED Jan 2, 2024

@nano In my opinion, the best graphical installer was Synaptic but it seems like Debian recently(?) switched away from it so

@nano While there are totally valid reasons to suggest the terminal, I totally agree that this isn't one of them. Installing apps is already somewhat distro-dependent, so yes, we should totally just suggest using the GUI apps for this instead!

LisPi Jan 3, 2024

@nano @rysertio At the same time, it's a lot more annoying to install all of synaptic's dependencies than just go "apt install emacs"

I haven't been impressed by the others' ability to see wtf they're installing either.

Synaptic is one of those where it doesn't hide a lot more than it should.

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Jan 3, 2024

@nano My latest laptop came with Debian+KDE installed and I've never chosen KDE for myself but I decided to go with it and Discover is one of the real highlights or maybe even the highlight. I haven't thought of why, but I like it much better than Synaptic.

I use CLI to avoid Synaptic, but I actually use Discover.

Fluffy Kitty Cat Jan 4, 2024

@nano we need to make the shopping bags work great, I agree. we could even try and have them auto-install tarballs and github links you paste if such a thing can be easily automated. I remember being deterred from running stuff as a baby linux user because the linux version was just some tarball and you had to compile it yourself and if you were lucky it was a few commands and if not I guess I can't run it