The LSB (Linux Standard Base) project and its parent organization, the FSG (Free Standards Group), plan to ease the process, for both users and developers, to install an application on Linux. According to Ian Murdock, CEO of the FSG and chair of the LSB, what Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) want is "to treat Linux as a single platform, which means they want to offer a single package for Linux, much as they do for Windows." To do this, many linux developpers agreed, according to Murdock, that the best real-world solution was to construct "a single API that could be implemented across the various package systems, because APIs make for nice evolutionary steps and can, done right, mask underlying implementation differences."
News source: eWeek
News source: eWeek
This ranks number 1 on what I hate about Linux. I hate finding a program, only to find it provides packages for one or two other distros and have to download the source and compile it (which often goes wrong). One file for linux as a whole is the way forward. This should go some way to getting linux on the desktop.
Last edited by NightmarE D on 03 Jan 2007 - 20:30
Synaptic is pretty easy to use. I tried a Live CD distro that used it and installing software required zero intervention. You just select the software and Synaptic installs it along with all required libs and needed updates.
Now I just wish my wi-fi card would be recognized by Linux.
I'm the same way. Now that I've been using Ubuntu and openSUSE for a while, I've grown used to package managers, which are relatively easy to use, but it would be even better to simply download one installer, and know it will install easily and quickly, no matter which distro I use.
Like others have said, this is certainly one of the best ways to make Linux more widespread, especially on the desktops of home users.
Well that just makes 100% no sense unless your just trying to be an elitist. Also anyone who thinks that if more "less tech saavy" people using linux makes the OS less secure is out of their minds. The only way it would make the anything less secure is because those users are more likely to continually run as root, etc, however that does not make the OS more insecure that just means the users computer is insecure
People dont bother writing viruses for linux because a) its hard, and b) it isnt popular enough (all the noobs use windows
I hope they get it working, it'll go a LONG way towards getting Linux into the mainstream...
Last edited by denzilla on 03 Jan 2007 - 17:22
It's the same in Windows, OS X and just about any OS.
And, if I use the synaptic interface, I install using the same app (UI, menu selections) from Fedora to Ubuntu/Debian to SUSE. Same clicks and methods to install celestia for all of these.
So, that takes care of disros and Destkop Environments. Not sure what you mean by different kernels. It is the same for Fedora running 2.6.16 as Debian 2.4.20. Fire up synaptic and go (if you are concerned about one standard method).
Yes, for these different versions, there can be different versions (.deb vs .rpm), but the "average user" never sees this. They see the same supermarket of apps interface from one to the other. And this API discussed in the article doesn't have anything to do with the underlying package managers, so that isn't affected by this news item at all.
There's nothing wrong with multiple distributions and GUI's ;-)
As long as they can 'work together' (for example: menu items show up the same in KDE and Gnome), I don't see the problem.
This is another effort towards 'working together'.
For me, though, I haven't had these problems many of you seem to have. "yum install fluxbox" gets me fluxbox. "yum install celestia" installed celestia. Two exceptions were conky (resource monitor) which was in a different repo: "yum install conky --enablerepo=drpixel" and UT2k4, where I just ran the universal Linux installer they included right on the CD.
This seems to be intended to interface into existing repos (which Open Source software already does). Closed Source software can have a single installer, too. At least there is one on the UT2k4 CD.
Can anyone shed insight into what existing packages or apps, precisely, this is needed for? If it is a "future" closed source app, they can use a method similar to what Epic did for UT.
Other than that, all I see here is a standard interface API that continues to use the existing underlying rpm/dpkg/etc systems.
there's several major put offs. if they fix 'em, linux would be windows competition, but the linux world don't seem to have the business smarts to do it.
For all you people complaining about how it is too difficult to install programs in Linux and that is why you won't use it, fine, don't use it. No one is making you use it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Same with me, I won't like this approach and would hope this never happens.
If you want an open source system that is the same, then use a BSD variant. I have decided to use a Linux system and I chose the distro I like.
If you don't want to use this, don't. Heck, if you don't want to, don't use any package management
Grow up, if you don't like it, then continue downloading the source code and compiling it yourself, and stop whining while the vast majority of the Linux community enjoys moving towards some kind of standards.
In the long run this should be very good for the community. Maybe now there will start to be some of the big players releasing apps for linux now that they will only have to create one installation package.
Dreamweaver on linux anyone? :p
Most popular distros get large numbers of vendor support these days and get pre-made packages for them anyway. There are enough packages out there to satisfy any need within reason (that is, don't come tell me Windows Media support sucks and such), that I don't see the point of being able to pull a package from another distribution because it probably has been ported to the distro you are using already.
If standardization efforts is said to improve uniformity across distros and thus improve quality and produce less user headaches, do tell me why that the distros still have different ways of doing things now. If standardization is the solution to all our troubles, why hasn't anyone taken it seriously over the years that the so-called "standardization" is taking place?
Just a proud Mandrake->Fedora->SuSE->Gentoo user's $.02.
Last edited by Nave on 04 Jan 2007 - 11:16
becouse there are too many cooks in the kitchen. What don't you understand? This is exactly what this whole article is about. Standards across the board.
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