0install Reaches 2.0 61
tal197 writes "Zero Install, the decentralized cross-platform software installation system, announced 0install 2.0 today after 2 years in development. 0install allows authors to publish directly from their own web-sites, while supporting familiar features such as shared libraries, automatic updates, dependency handling and digital signatures. With more than one thousand packages now available, is this finally a viable platform?"
Slashvertisement? (Score:3, Informative)
As the third of tal197's four slashdot submissions was entitled "Zero Install Project Makes 1.0 Release" [slashdot.org], can I assume this is just an advertisement?
Great Ideas Fail All The Time (Score:2, Informative)
It's similar in concept to a decentralized app store or repository. It sounds like a great idea. It sounds like it free your system from the "clutches" of your distro's repository.
But, like many other great ideas, it fails in the cold daylight of reality.
In order for it to work, the software developer has to not only publish their software on the Zero Install system, they have to publish their software for ALL the distros on it. But, we all know well that most software developers regard this as far too cumbersome an undertaking and will instead publish only a single or couple of binaries. That leaves out countless other distros and causes the Zero Install concept to fall apart.
But, there's another issue. Most distro repositories don't simply have 1,000 apps. They have multiple thousands of apps. And all of those apps are compiled specifically for that distro and therefore "guaranteed to work" with your distro.
Simply put Zero Install lacks enough apps, for enough different distros, for anyone to really care about it. It's a niche player in a shrinking pool.
I am reminded of an RPM based alternative package manager distro that was "so much better" and was adoopted by several big players. It might have had live kernel patching too. Yet I cannot remember the name or find it with my Google foo. It was supposed to change everything because it was so much better and, although I'm sure it's still around, "nobody" uses it.