I do not really understand the attitude towards installing on windows. It’s so much simpler than Linux. Don’t get me wrong. Updating is so much easier on Linux, but installing? No. I went to install digiKam today. Was it on pacman? No. Button for flatpak on their site though, so I’m already at the same point I would have been on windows. Click that. Error. Well wtf. K so I try through Shelly and that works fine.
Linux has sooo many ways to install. That’s not good. It’s the most common refrain I’ve heard “use your package manager!” That is never gonna work 100% of the time. Unlike windows where you always have to search for the application, download it from the website, and run it. On Linux it can be a tar.gz, a flatpak, an AppImage, a Snap, a deb, rpm, etc.
Does anyone ask what format to use to install things on windows? Or is it always “download an exe and run”? While one of the first questions a Linux newb will ask is “how do I install this?” when given twenty different install options on a software install page.
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On a different note, I completely disagree with most of the authors complaints about windows and also disagree with the things he likes about windows lol. The settings menu is horrific, applications (excluding windows three different UI themes) are themed extremely consistently unlike gnome vs kde apps in plasma, the task bar is for showing running things and is a way better solution to see that something is running that I don’t want running rather than opening btop.
The author complains about titlebar actions and says they are “such basic settings virtually every operating system and desktop environment support are unavailable on Windows is indefensible.” which is laughable when Linux is only 5% of the desktop market and Mac doesn’t support them either. I use arch and I literally didn’t know kde even had those. It’s such a niche feature but this is exactly what happens with Linux users. They think something is common when it’s impossibly niche.
Also, windows explorer handles compressed files out of the box, idk how he missed that. I literally helped my wife do so on her work computer last week.
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Windows sucks though. Go Linux. But seriously, being honest about shortcomings is what continues to improve Linux, let’s not pretend like it’s all sunshine and daisies.
digiKam is just in the Debian packages and easily installable via the package manager. YMMV depending on your distro. I guess that’s what your complaint amounts to.
Linux is about having the choice to use what you want to use. If something is too difficult or annoying for you, switch to something else.
You have that option on Linux.
Don’t like using snaps? Don’t use Canonical’s bs. AppImages work on just about everything when they’re available.
Deb/rpm/whatever depends on your package manager, so you should really just use what your package manager supports. Don’t use rpm on Debian, don’t use deb on Fedora.
6 paragraphs to explain how it works on Linux vs one sentence for windows. Do you not see the problem here? Claiming that it’s easier on Linux is just plain lying. While you have more choice, sure, but that’s not at all what the author of the article said, nor the user I responded to. The author said it was more confusing on windows, which is just plain false.
I only have to look at the family members I have who have dozens of versions of .exe and .msi installers for the same program littering their Downloads folder, and then for some reason those unpack to subfolders in C:\ and leave their unpacked installer files there without any good reason for it.
Why not just use the temp folder and remove them afterward?
That’s on top of Windows itself littering the drive with temporary files, installer files or otherwise.
People who have been using Windows since the early days are still trying to figure out how to clean up after it, and every iteration is made more confusing by Microsoft.
Cleaning up installers when pulling things in through your package manager is a cakewalk in comparison.
Considering how appimages are mostly self-contained there’s little to clean other than the single file which you run it through, and the few configurations left in ~/.config or ~/.local/share. Easy peasy.
I have less experience with Flatpak but I’m sure it’s similarily easy to find out. I’m never touching snap again after trying it once because it’s beyond dumb.
Of course if you build from source through git or otherwise, you’re going to have to make sure you remember where you put things.
Everything on Windows is just so much more confusing than it has to be. And that’s without touching on the whole licensing bs or the way you may find some programs in the installed program list in the system configuration window and some aren’t in there for reasons unknown… Where’s the uninstaller in that case? Oh, the uninstaller isn’t there anymore? Try and figure out how to uninstall the program that doesn’t want to uninstall.
Let’s take programs like Avira or Avast or whatever program which embeds itself in your registry and five or six different folders. You try to uninstall it, it claims to have uninstalled, but then Revo still finds thirty different registry entries and whatnot.
In my experience AppImages will tell you when a new version is available and you can easily replace the old version with the new one when that happens.
It’s just a simple download. You’re in control. Don’t want to update because the new version glitches out or changed something you don’t like? Just keep using the old version.
If you want bleeding edge upgrades, you’re going to have to keep in mind the words used to described it.
You’re going to be the canary in the coalmine, dealing with bugs and oddities which users on slower update cycles don’t have anymore because they use your experiences and bug reports to fix what breaks.
It certainly sounds to me like you’re in your own way, and are putting the blame on devs instead of your choice.
You want the newest packages but without bugs? That situation simply doesn’t exist.
I agree with you there, installing new software on Linux can often be quite a pain if it’s not available on flatpak. Repos will be out of date, appimages don’t auto update, grabbing a binary has no easy way to add to the start menu or taskbar and also doesn’t generally auto update.
Even if it is on flatpak then I often end up dealing with flatpaks annoying permissions blocking normal features like streaming my screen in a browser, which is even more obnoxious.
I still can’t get hardware acceleration for video working on my laptop after months, videos players and browsers struggle to play back anything, something that works perfectly on windows with zero setup.
If the subset of software available in the Debian package repository includes all the software you ever need, or if you are OK with potentially waiting years to have missing software added, and if you are OK with what are likely outdated versions of that software, then yes, all you need is apt-get install.
But, personally, I don’t think I’ve had a Linux install that didn’t include software installed from other sources
Sometimes knowing what the actual package name is without some kind of browser or being told what it is explicitly can be a challenge, but that really is the only hard part.
Well, I’ve mostly only ever needed pacman but I did have to flatpak something once, which on Cachy is a nightmare.
None the less, the updating point is quite valid; I forgot how many auto updaters I had on Windows (that yes, I disable but they come back). I think the main thing is the repository method of installing is just superior when it has what you need and it’s a shame it can’t be done at the scale needed without more Linux adoption.
As for themes… well, I have no idea what he was trying to run that had such inconsistent themes but it sounded like he was using some very old programs. My experience with KDE differs from yours though; I was surprised just how many apps took my customizations. Granted, they won me over with icons for virtually every app I use, which is something I’m not even sure Windows could do legally (e.g. custom icon for Steam, slack, etc).
I agree with you on settings, though. My guess is it’s more aligned with other OS’ settings menus, but I personally like the old control panel more. And task bar? Well, given my system has a tenth as many things running in the background than I used to have on Windows, I haven’t noticed Linux missing anything.
In any case, I also agree there’s still room for improvement. The way I look at it, Linux has better concepts built into it that need larger adoption to fully get to where it wants to be. Microsoft has the resources and scale but wastes it on old broken code and enshittification. It’s a shame, really.
I do not really understand the attitude towards installing on windows. It’s so much simpler than Linux. Don’t get me wrong. Updating is so much easier on Linux, but installing? No. I went to install digiKam today. Was it on pacman? No. Button for flatpak on their site though, so I’m already at the same point I would have been on windows. Click that. Error. Well wtf. K so I try through Shelly and that works fine.
Linux has sooo many ways to install. That’s not good. It’s the most common refrain I’ve heard “use your package manager!” That is never gonna work 100% of the time. Unlike windows where you always have to search for the application, download it from the website, and run it. On Linux it can be a tar.gz, a flatpak, an AppImage, a Snap, a deb, rpm, etc.
Does anyone ask what format to use to install things on windows? Or is it always “download an exe and run”? While one of the first questions a Linux newb will ask is “how do I install this?” when given twenty different install options on a software install page.
——
On a different note, I completely disagree with most of the authors complaints about windows and also disagree with the things he likes about windows lol. The settings menu is horrific, applications (excluding windows three different UI themes) are themed extremely consistently unlike gnome vs kde apps in plasma, the task bar is for showing running things and is a way better solution to see that something is running that I don’t want running rather than opening btop.
The author complains about titlebar actions and says they are “such basic settings virtually every operating system and desktop environment support are unavailable on Windows is indefensible.” which is laughable when Linux is only 5% of the desktop market and Mac doesn’t support them either. I use arch and I literally didn’t know kde even had those. It’s such a niche feature but this is exactly what happens with Linux users. They think something is common when it’s impossibly niche.
Also, windows explorer handles compressed files out of the box, idk how he missed that. I literally helped my wife do so on her work computer last week.
—-
Windows sucks though. Go Linux. But seriously, being honest about shortcomings is what continues to improve Linux, let’s not pretend like it’s all sunshine and daisies.
digiKam is just in the Debian packages and easily installable via the package manager. YMMV depending on your distro. I guess that’s what your complaint amounts to.
Linux is about having the choice to use what you want to use. If something is too difficult or annoying for you, switch to something else.
You have that option on Linux.
Don’t like using snaps? Don’t use Canonical’s bs. AppImages work on just about everything when they’re available.
Deb/rpm/whatever depends on your package manager, so you should really just use what your package manager supports. Don’t use rpm on Debian, don’t use deb on Fedora.
It’s really not that hard to grasp.
6 paragraphs to explain how it works on Linux vs one sentence for windows. Do you not see the problem here? Claiming that it’s easier on Linux is just plain lying. While you have more choice, sure, but that’s not at all what the author of the article said, nor the user I responded to. The author said it was more confusing on windows, which is just plain false.
It is more confusing on Windows though.
I only have to look at the family members I have who have dozens of versions of .exe and .msi installers for the same program littering their Downloads folder, and then for some reason those unpack to subfolders in C:\ and leave their unpacked installer files there without any good reason for it.
Why not just use the temp folder and remove them afterward?
That’s on top of Windows itself littering the drive with temporary files, installer files or otherwise.
People who have been using Windows since the early days are still trying to figure out how to clean up after it, and every iteration is made more confusing by Microsoft.
Cleaning up installers when pulling things in through your package manager is a cakewalk in comparison.
Considering how appimages are mostly self-contained there’s little to clean other than the single file which you run it through, and the few configurations left in ~/.config or ~/.local/share. Easy peasy.
I have less experience with Flatpak but I’m sure it’s similarily easy to find out. I’m never touching snap again after trying it once because it’s beyond dumb.
Of course if you build from source through git or otherwise, you’re going to have to make sure you remember where you put things.
Everything on Windows is just so much more confusing than it has to be. And that’s without touching on the whole licensing bs or the way you may find some programs in the installed program list in the system configuration window and some aren’t in there for reasons unknown… Where’s the uninstaller in that case? Oh, the uninstaller isn’t there anymore? Try and figure out how to uninstall the program that doesn’t want to uninstall.
Let’s take programs like Avira or Avast or whatever program which embeds itself in your registry and five or six different folders. You try to uninstall it, it claims to have uninstalled, but then Revo still finds thirty different registry entries and whatnot.
It’s easier on Linux. By far.
AppImages don’t have any kind of update method do they?
Debian repo is usually really out of date. Fedora is less so but often I’m still not getting the latest versions.
In my experience AppImages will tell you when a new version is available and you can easily replace the old version with the new one when that happens. It’s just a simple download. You’re in control. Don’t want to update because the new version glitches out or changed something you don’t like? Just keep using the old version.
If you want bleeding edge upgrades, you’re going to have to keep in mind the words used to described it. You’re going to be the canary in the coalmine, dealing with bugs and oddities which users on slower update cycles don’t have anymore because they use your experiences and bug reports to fix what breaks.
It certainly sounds to me like you’re in your own way, and are putting the blame on devs instead of your choice. You want the newest packages but without bugs? That situation simply doesn’t exist.
I agree with you there, installing new software on Linux can often be quite a pain if it’s not available on flatpak. Repos will be out of date, appimages don’t auto update, grabbing a binary has no easy way to add to the start menu or taskbar and also doesn’t generally auto update.
Even if it is on flatpak then I often end up dealing with flatpaks annoying permissions blocking normal features like streaming my screen in a browser, which is even more obnoxious.
I still can’t get hardware acceleration for video working on my laptop after months, videos players and browsers struggle to play back anything, something that works perfectly on windows with zero setup.
I’ve been on Linux desktop for well over 23 years now
For the apst 21 years I’ve used
apt-get install PACKAGE and everything gets downloaded and installed automatically and updated automatically
So hard, much difficult
If the subset of software available in the Debian package repository includes all the software you ever need, or if you are OK with potentially waiting years to have missing software added, and if you are OK with what are likely outdated versions of that software, then yes, all you need is
apt-get install.But, personally, I don’t think I’ve had a Linux install that didn’t include software installed from other sources
Sometimes knowing what the actual package name is without some kind of browser or being told what it is explicitly can be a challenge, but that really is the only hard part.
Well, I’ve mostly only ever needed pacman but I did have to flatpak something once, which on Cachy is a nightmare.
None the less, the updating point is quite valid; I forgot how many auto updaters I had on Windows (that yes, I disable but they come back). I think the main thing is the repository method of installing is just superior when it has what you need and it’s a shame it can’t be done at the scale needed without more Linux adoption.
As for themes… well, I have no idea what he was trying to run that had such inconsistent themes but it sounded like he was using some very old programs. My experience with KDE differs from yours though; I was surprised just how many apps took my customizations. Granted, they won me over with icons for virtually every app I use, which is something I’m not even sure Windows could do legally (e.g. custom icon for Steam, slack, etc).
I agree with you on settings, though. My guess is it’s more aligned with other OS’ settings menus, but I personally like the old control panel more. And task bar? Well, given my system has a tenth as many things running in the background than I used to have on Windows, I haven’t noticed Linux missing anything.
In any case, I also agree there’s still room for improvement. The way I look at it, Linux has better concepts built into it that need larger adoption to fully get to where it wants to be. Microsoft has the resources and scale but wastes it on old broken code and enshittification. It’s a shame, really.