A Windows-Based Packaging Mechanism 451
FishWithAHammer writes "As part of my Google Summer of Code project, I'm working with WinLibre to develop a Debian-like software download system for free/open source software on the Windows platform. My reasoning is that open source software suffers from poor presentation. Most computer laymen, even those aware of open source software, often don't have any idea how to go about looking for it, but would use it if it were easier to access. What I have proposed is both a Debian-style packaging mechanism (capable of using Windows Installer MSIs or not, as the user wishes) and a software 'catalog' that takes the best aspects of Synaptic and Linspire's Click-N-Run system. Seamless, simple installation and removal of programs in as straightforward a way as apt-get (there will be a command-line tool as well). I'm posting to Slashdot to get the ideas of you lot who, while you may not be the target audience, can certainly provide insights that can be of value." Read on for more of this reader's ideas and questions.
There are areas that I'm personally not familiar with, and while I have done some research I would like the opinions of Slashdotters on some others. While at first I intend to set it up so that WinLibre (and I) run only one repository, I am curious as to how this sort of tool could be most useful to network administrators. Customizable repositories will be available; the code will be under the GPL, after all, so it'd be a little hard for them not to be available.
I'm also interested in the ideas of those who might be in a position to roll together packages. I intend to package a number of open-source language interpreters with the core software to allow special pre- and post-install scripts, as well as removal scripts. C#Script, Perl, and Python are definites, as is a Cygwin sh interpreter. We will have some program requirements — chief among them that no registry changes may be made by the program — but some of them, I fear, will require some flexibility; some programs really do require a way to edit the registry, for example, and I am considering offering some sort of tracked way to make registry changes so they can be rolled back on uninstallation of the program.
I'd love to hear what Slashdotters think of this. Think of it as a wishlist, but you don't get any damn ponies.
Ed Ropple (FishWithAHammer)"
Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
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[But punch the monkey and you can download bsod here]
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
C:\>apt-get remove bsod
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
bsod: is required by win-desktop
bsod: is required by win-gui
bsod: is required by nt-kernel
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
C:\> Removal of BSOD requires the following dependencies to be uninstalled:
> Windows Operating System
> Explorer.exe
> Continue Y/N?
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Yes! YES!!
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Informative)
It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
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just kidding. ..
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
If GNU/Linux was the only operating system that had applications like Firefox, OpenOffice, VLC, and so on, I think it would be a much more attractive option than Windows is. Yet, we've ported some of our best applications to the proprietary Windows platform, and as a consequence of this there is less incentive for Windows users to become users of Free Software operating systems.
I'm not necessarily saying that these ports shouldn't take place, but I think we should be aware of the fact that porting a great application to Windows does lessen the incentive for Windows users to make the switch.
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Port the application to Windows
2. Get people addicted to it (that's the hardest part).
3. Make sure that new developments are always available on Linux first (so that there's a real incentive to switch to Linux).
4. At some time, introduce Linux-only features.
5. After enough users have switched to Linux, drop Windows support.
6. ???
7. Profit!
(Sorry, the last two lines just had to come!
Of course the problem with this plan is that starting from step 4 on, it's virtually impossible to do with FOSS: If you don't implement those features on Windows, likely someone else will do. And if you drop Windows support, probably someone else will take over (remember, as of step 2, it's a popular application).
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
That type of mentally will do more damage to the open source movement then anything else.
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this brings up a very good point. For some applications like Audacity, the preferred platform may actually be Linux, or more specifically, distros that are aimed at being a professional audio/video workstation like Ubuntu Studio, which includes a low-latency kernel tuned for A/V work and dozens of audio tools that are only available on *nix. Audacity may work on Windows, but I've used it on both platforms and I much prefer to work with it on a low-latency-optimized Linux setup, right beside applications like Ardour with a plugin architecture like JACK.
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cross-platform FOSS broke & open software dist (Score:3, Insightful)
In reality, it tends to work the other way around. Take the Amiga emulator, UAE, for instance. I think, among other meanings, the U once stood for Unix. Yet, most of the best features are in the Windows version now, and they're developed in a non-cross-platform manner, by people who don't care about OpenGL's standardisation over DirectX, etc. Same with other emulators, and probabl
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's the package selection process (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
The Microsoft platform can't be that shaky if Apple hasn't been able to get and hold 10% of the market in damn near twenty-five years.
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The cutting-edge iMacs that they got in during my 8th grade year were probably the worst advertising Apple could have hoped for. I'd bet that everyone who went through that school now has a strong bias against Macs.
They crashed way, way more often than win98 (not just the ones that were in computer labs being screwed around on by a few hundred students, I mean just-out-of-the-box ones issued to teachers) and performed like 2-3 year old (at t
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You're right: "open source" can mean using Linux, Solaris, BSD, or even HURD. However, it does also mean "not Windows!"
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It d
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This has been debunked before. it's easier to switch OS when you are still running familiar apps on top of it after the change. e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird.
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Insightful)
"We've ported to Windows"? Who the heck are ya?
Firefox, based on the XUL platform, which from the very beginning was designed to be multi-platform.
It has evolved from the proprietary Netscape before were also inherently multi-platform from the very start.
OpenOffice, evolved from the proprietary StarOffice, inherently multiplatform.
As for VLC, why exactly not having this one on Windows makes Linux any better. Can't Windows play Windows Media files? Does it lack a hundred of other players?
And I have another question for you: who do you think make products like Firefox popular. It's Windows users. The majority of people out there run Windows. It's when people started installing Firefox on their Windows machines, that the stats went up, and Firefox started to matter.
If Firefox never existed on Windows, do you think anyone but geeks would care for it? If you're thinking what answer might be, look no further from Konqueror: who the hell (but geeks) cared about this one browser which was only available on Linux, BEFORE Apple took their code and turned it in WebKit/Safari?
I agree (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, Mozilla is so fed up with *nix package managers and umpteen different repositories, that they no longer even distribut
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:4, Interesting)
Like someone said up in the thread, there is no way to prevent anyone porting nice OSS app to non-free OS. Therefore, users will virtually never feel the urge to switch over to Linux because of a "killer app(s)".
When (or if) massive switchover happens, it will be only because Microsoft tried to squeeze users too much and they found they lose nothing important if they switch.
In other words, blurring the border between the two by porting Free Software on proprietary platforms, making users gradually adapt to environment they would find in Linux, makes user migration to it more probable, in fact as probable as realistically possible. Side effect would be pushing the shareware producers out of the Windows market by pressure of irresistible competition, which in turn would decrease number of developers for that platform and at the same time force Microsoft to "deal with devil" and try to play nicer with FOSS side and users.
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just kidding. ..
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The few features that Linux now has over Windows are going to be implemented on the world's most protected operating system sooner or later. Since MS does nothing without changing things a little and wrapping it up in patents, we have to be very wary of what happens to our beloved multiple desktops, packet managers + central/p2p software repositories and shells (and I'm sure people can think of others). In other words; has this w
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The desktop I use at work is a Windows one, as this is what all but one customers use -- so even though I spend a lot of time sshed to a real box, things like Firefox, Gimp, TortoiseSVN, etc, etc, are all win32 binaries. And having them keep up to date by a single command as opposed to visiting every single homepage once in a time would be
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I can see a lot of benefits for the developers, suck as skipping an installer altogether, but all the end-user can rely on is trial and error if there are ten programs under the same category and no detailed feature lists.
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true story (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, one time, I did that... registry exploded...
word of honor.
Re:It's the package selection process (Score:5, Informative)
The second reason is Windows-specific. On UNIX, you can delete a file that applications have open, and it will not actually be removed from the disk until the last application with an open handle for it exits. On Windows, you can't do this. On *NIX, if you want up upgrade libfoo.so, you can delete it and then install the new libfoo.so, and every running application that uses it will keep using the deleted version until you restart it. On Windows, if you want to upgrade foo.dll, then it will tell you that you can't delete foo.dll because it is in use. This is why Windows installers often tell you to quit all applications. The work-around for this is to add a little script that replaces the old foo.dll with the new one on the next reboot (before anyone has tried loading it) and then continues.
I don't know if the second problem is fixed on Windows - I haven't used it for four or so years - but even if it has there are probably a lot of people out there writing installers who don't know that it's fixed.
Security, security, security. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Security, security, security. (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite a step forward in my book.
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interesting! (Score:2, Insightful)
Registry (Score:5, Insightful)
Good on you for trying to better the system man, I wish you the best of luck!
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Something I've always missed it the --purge feature, sometimes you want to do a re-install without losing your configuration and sometimes you simply want to get rid of it all.
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Avoiding registry settings is very difficult if the applications are coded to store their settings in the registry. Most people do not realise however that you can move COM registration (ie HKCR/CLSID, HKCR/Interfaces, HKCR/TypeLib etc) out of the registry and into manifest files on XP/W2k3/Vista.
I woul
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It's hardly a new idea; in the past I'd toyed with trying to start a grassroots movement I called Windindin (Windows Data Independence Initiative), that would
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[...] place config and state data and even user files in predictable standardized places, to make them easy to find AND easy to collectively back-up.
I'm unclear on how this is any different to the Registry.
I'm also unclear on how it is any sort of improvement. Would your text files be transactional ? How would you apply ACLs to their contents ? How would you implement sanity checking on the data ?
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The Registry is monolithic, for one thing.
Sure. In the same sense that a directory full of configuration files is "monolithic".
(Not to mention the whole "it's monolithic" argument is completely arbitrary. Do databases suck because they are "monolithic" ?)
The app config data that gets stored in it is not easily backed-up WITH the app and separate from everything else, whether to archive or migrate to another system.
It's pretty easy to dump some keys from the Registry if you need to.
There are plenty
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It's NOT easy, damned near impossible, if the OS is Windows NT/2K/XP/2003 and isn't bootable. Even if the file system and structure is fine and the Registry hive files are otherwise accessible, there's no means known to me that would allow extracting data from them.
I've had this happen to me more than once, where the OS got trashed, and I'd have rather just started from scratch, BUT I had a ton of customizations for apps and the OS burie
Really? (Score:2)
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This is one of the areas where Free Software is far, far ahead of what Windows currently has.
Right up until the software you want isn't in the repo, or is broken. Then it falls way, way behind.
There's also the "what the hell is it called" issue, but that's become less significant in the last year or two, although that benefit is largely restricted to Ubuntu and its derivatives.
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Accepted does not mean decent.
Add/Remove really doesn't have anything to actually Add. And the Remove aspect of Add/Remove doesn't actually remove. Some programs go so far as to only remove the shortcuts and say "Uninstall Complete!", while others leave behind large swaths of registry entries and several MB of unnecessary files at C:\, Windows, Program Files, AppData, Local Data, Local Data\AppData (the other AppData, ugh) and a
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But the real failure in Windows is a decent way to keep any number of applications up to date.
Actually it does, along with having a way to populate that "Add" section, as per your comment above.
The downside is you need a properly managed AD environment to see it.
As for the reason it's not there "by default", that should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever used the word "Microsoft" and "monopoly" in the same sentence.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your complaint boils down to "some people make bad packages", which occurs on Linux as well, and is just the nature of software to be imperfect. I cannot count the number of bugs or non-working setups I've tracked down to bad packages, and even better, in the Linux world fixing such a bug once doesn't make it go away - it'll be repeated in 3 months time by a different distribution.
That would be nice, yes.
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Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
They all handle updates as well, so you have a central place to keep all your entire system patched. For example, when a vulnerability is discovered in a core library (libz, or linpng have been recent examples), you need to go through your system checkiing that every application which uses one of these libraries is updated. This is almost impossible on Windows, but automatic on systems with package managers.
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A lot of work, but simple, conceptually... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the bigger project, basically you just need a set of per-package install/uninstall scripts that check for dependancies (or no-longer-needed dependancies on uninstall), do their thing, and write themselves to a standardized catalog of installed software. Whether or not you can adapt Windows' list of such software, and the MSI interface in general, to your needs, I can't say offhand. I would think you can at least list the package therein, but I don't think that handles dependancy information quite as elegantly as you would want.
I see the biggest problem you'll have as coming from the poor regression testing done for Windows ports of FOSS - You may well need multiple (version-specific) instances of some dependancies installed at the same time, for different packages that use "working until version 2.8.10.4" features (or more of a nightmare, "working until KB935356").
Overall, I wish you luck with this. I think the Windows world has needed something like apt-get (with a mind-numbingly simple GUI) for a loooooong time.
Re:A lot of work, but simple, conceptually... (Score:5, Insightful)
-Actually install MySQL, PHP and Apache easily without having to use a third party package that holds them all. Yeah, windows is sure free of dependencies. Just great especially when your programs are inherently dependent on each other, oh wait no its a pain in the ass.
-Download whatever packages I need without needing to deal with searching the web for the place to download this from. The whole find, download install file, run install file thing gets annoying pretty quickly. Especially when you have a bunch of software to download.
-Queue uninstalls, god damn do I hate the fucking windows uninstaller where you need to uninstall, wait,uninstall next item. Thats not even counting how it fucking breaks in one way or another after a while on most systems I've used.
Here's a concept I'd like to see (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, the current system is that OO Writer and KWord are in the "word processor" category. But what if I want something that can open AmiPro documents? What options do I have there? That's generally not included anywhere in the package's description.
I found this weird
Or, what music player has the ability of playing
What mail clients can I choose from if I'd like both NNTP and IMAP support?
What programs are available that do some function that is related to an HP nx5000 laptop? (this would match programs controlling LCD brightness, support for the onboard bluetooth, etc)
A nice thing would having these capabilities roughly grouped as "can access" (can play
Good idea (Score:2)
Definitely true. Part of the reason is that programmers often just like to program, not make things easier for the user. Writing a manual and making things easy can take 90% of the development time.
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not only the programmers' fault, though. Far too few users bother to suggest interface simplification,or even know how to advocate it. Merely complaining will not work - developers need to be shown that it can be done, and how, by means of mock-ups or illustrations. A few innovative user interface interested users could do wonders for many projects simply by drawing new user interfaces and submitting them to various free software projects, asking if they are interested in going a few rounds of design iterations with them. Often an outside eye, and interest in doing some adapting from both sides, is all that is needed.
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I wrote a mesh conversion utility once. It was used by thousands of people and my 'manual' (web-based tutorial, with screenshots) was so good that nobody ever asked me how to use the app except when there was a bug. I got plenty of praise on my tutorial as well. The tutorial probably took a couple hours to pre
Already exists? (Score:2, Insightful)
Vista... (Score:2)
ReactOS compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Cygwin packaging (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I would suggest is that you make it easy for somebody to package a standalone
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Cywin's setup.exe is a PIA, but hardly unfriendly. It behaves in much the same way as most GUI programs. Short of writing a "wizard", I don't see how it could it made more friendly. Where the setup.exe approach fails is that on the front end, it's not command-line driven, and the backend, well, there
There may be an existing solution ... (Score:5, Informative)
You may want to look at wpkg (http://wpkg.org/ [wpkg.org])
It is a windows package management system based on dpkg.
We use it at work and it appears to work fairly well. Although I don't know for sure, as I'm not the PC admin and I don't run a Windows desktop :)
I just get to hear him saying how much easier it is to manage the PCs with it.
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It's a brilliant first go at it, though.
Not sure (Score:5, Interesting)
The first issue that occurs to me immediately is that Windows has no single suitable native package management system that you can hook onto. Because of this, program installations tend either to (i) include whatever prerequisites they need and check whether their installation is necessary; or (ii) list the prerequisites in the installation instructions and leave it up to the user to ensure they are satisfied. Now, you might say that the whole point of the project is to resolve this, but I think you are going to run into licensing problems when you try. Let's say a particular open source product relies on .NET Framework 2. Are you then going to include .NET Framework 2 in your repository? Are you going to download it from Microsoft, using Microsoft's Download Center as a kind of adjunct repository? Are you going to talk to Microsoft to see if they will cooperate in working out a solution? This seems hard.
I do think that a single starting point for finding quality open source solutions on Windows has merit. Right now there is a bewildering mass of products out there, and no easy way of sifting the gems from the dross. If nothing else, you might be able to provide a good menu of open source products that are deemed worthy of consideration.
Good luck!
Cygwin? (Score:2)
MSI (Score:3, Informative)
Why re-invent the wheel? This is open to everyone and well documented on MSDN and countless forums all over the web.
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The OP should have a look at Wix (on sourceforge), which was MS's very first foray in to the world of open source. Its a XML-based msi creation tool. It may not help the package manager but will provide the tools for OSS developers to create msi packages (especially if you provide easy-to-modify simple packages) ready to slot into your manager.
Re:MSI (Score:4, Interesting)
But MSI doesn't do what the Linux/BSD packagers do. These packagers work by tracking every single file or update done to the entire system. Then they track dependencies between files and packages. They store all this in a database format, which allows you to ask questions like "what is every package that uses MSVCRT71.DLL? And "what will break if I update package GIF_VIEWER from version 1.0 to version 1.1?" They also manage side-by-side installs, provide a central repository for searching for packages and upgrades, and provide a safe digitally signed repository for applications.
This is one of the killer features of Linux that I miss on Windows. But I suspect it won't work for the same reasons it doesn't work on Linux. It's only useful if 100% of the applications use it. If any one of them doesn't, then the whole system can come crumbling down. But basically, it is a fix to DLL hell, so it can't make things on Windows any worse.
On a note of MSI, MSI may seem to do the above, but it doesn't. It's a packaging format, and it allows for install and rollback much like the Linux packaging systems do. But most of the time it is unrealistic to expect the repair/rollback/uninstall features to actually work. I've worked at a few companies who have made MSIs, and generally you take some other EXE or script-based installer, then you wrap it in an MSI and say you are done. You rarely use the actual MSI features because they are too complicated and the tools don't generall support them. And Windows installs are full of kluges like editing a registry key here, adding a shell extension there, etc. Things generally don't fit into the nicely packaged mentality.
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Idea: start menu (Score:2)
Could you introduce a debian-like menu, where each program has exactly one entry and is in the right category?
Considerations about multiple repositories (Score:4, Interesting)
1. How do you find additional repositories?
2. How do you find out if a given repository is trustworthy?
3. What to do if several repositories contain packages for the same application or library?
4. What about version inconsistencies?
Points 1 and 2 can IMHO be (mostly) solved together through a "repository web": Repositories not only contain packages, but also links to other repositories. Those links should also be rated, so you get a web of trust for repositories: You can mark several "root repositories" as trusted or untrusted (those settings should, of course, be user-changeable). Then trust would "propagate" through links marked as trusted, or "anti-propagate" through mistrust-links. One could even imagine "repository hubs", repositories which don't contain files, but only links to other repositories together with trust ratings. It might also be a good idea to have several trust ratings for the contained files, and for the contained links (after all, you can well imagine an excellent file repository where the maintainer isn't able to accurately rank the trust on inter-repository links).
For points 3 and 4 I don't have a suggestion right now, but they definitely should be considered (note that separately maintained repositories will almost certainly cause inconsistencies at some point).
Of course you can just pretend that there will always be only one repository, or that all repository providers will work together to avoid inconsistencies, but I think that's not really a good idea. Additional independent repositories will eventually come (assuming the project is a success), and therefore the problems caused by those should definitively be anticipated, even if originally there's only one repository.
Some people aren't RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a stealth feature. Get people installing applications that way, because then the Linux desktop will be more familiar.
Something really is needed. I keep coming across people who really need no more than Wordpad who are buying Office because they think they have to. I recently came across a guy who has bought Office 2007 and writes nothing but letters and the odd email. He thought that somehow saving his letter to Auntie Flo in Office 2007 format (docx) was "better" than saving it in Office 2000 .doc, right up to the point she couldn't open it as an email attachment and he had to "downgrade" his document. Microsoft is exploiting numskulls like that. (I'm only jealous of course - I'd love a list of 100 or so gullible people with money but, as I'm not a corporation with deep pockets, I might get into trouble.)
These people don't know OOo exists, and even if they did would never be able to find it. But a simple little packager that has a "Top picks" with something like "Open Office 2 - for all your home office needs" and a "click here to install" button - well, at least we'd be trying.
MSI (Score:2, Informative)
You might want to reconsider the decision not to use MSI as a back-end. I am not familiar with the details of the technology, but some of the supported features are command-line and GUI installs, and administrative network installs. And if you don't already know, Microsoft has released some open-source (!) tools for generating MSI packages: http://wix.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
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Updates system for OSS (Score:5, Interesting)
I have lots of applications, both OSS and commercial, that have some kind of update system built in - the application checks for an update when you start it, for instance, or when you select the option from the help menu. In fact it is getting to the stage where practically every app. has this.
What I would like to see is a single open method of doing this which could work for all applications (so even commercial software providers could opt into it if they wanted), which would be simple and secure. It would be great to have a single application open that ran at start-up that said: "The following applications have updates available:" and then lists the applications, and two buttons "Update all" and "Advanced" which would allow you to see details about the updates and select just the ones you want.
For instance on my Mac I have:
1) The Official Apple "Software update" that updates OSX and Apple Apps.
2) The Adobe updater for Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc.
3) The Firefox/Thunderbird updater
4) Dozens of updaters for individual apps like TextMate and OSS software
5) Updaters for OSS packages (Fink/darwinports)
(Yes, I know about the App Update widget but that only addresses part of the problem, and it does not provide a technical solution that can be used across platforms and projects).
And on Windows, I have the same kind of mess of updaters.
I'm sure there could be a simple, elegant technical solution for this, a kind of RSS-type standard for application updates - you could then choose your prefered updater just as you can now choose your preferred RSS reader.
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Perhaps the biggest issue will be getting all major OSS systems to agree on, and use, a single format for update info.
Right problem wrong solution (Score:2)
Without writing an easy here I really do think that this is one of the key ways to dramatically increase OSS desktop presence.
However, the problem is not the package manager, windows installer packages are good, or there are already ports of some of the more popular OSS package managers. The problem is managing the packages.
You are suggesting establishing a 'distribution', the fact that it is based on the Windows kernel isn't going to make this easier to maintain then a Linux kernel based distribution. Di
I wish only one thing (Score:2)
Cygwin (Score:2)
Nevertheless, isn't it a good start?
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On Windows one of the most annoying things that that things install themselves -- which gives them full control over what goes where, up to modifying obscure registry settings and overwriting files. That means you can never be sure you can uninstall something.
Package managers solve that: When I install say, kword it doesn't install itself. The package manager knows exactly what went where and can remove it. KWord itself runs as a normal use
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Packaging is a band aid on deeper problems with library incompatibility problems, the braindead scattering of software files all over the file system, and the completely pointless minor differences in Linux distributions.
Unlike you I value my time and wasting it on pointless activity doesn't appeal to me. To download an open source program now I need to google for a program, check which website is the right one, following a redirect to a working site, find+click the link to the download section, find+click the windows download link, find the newest version to download, click "yes I want to download you nitwit" and then select a mirror. Possibly at some point I will be told "we're sorry there is no windows version except in
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In Linux/Unix, you have a set of prefixes (/,
Yep. (Score:2)
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It is just OVH (a web hosting company) who has shit in their pants with the DADVSI law and asked e
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I am French and I have no knowledge of this law.
Could you send me links or references of supporting material?
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Your efforts would be better spent making wine better so we can use windows software on linux.
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Why are you addressing me? I'm not doing this project.
Mac users don't want to user open source package managers and neither to windows users.
I think they actually do: both Mac and Windows users like automatic updates. Furthermore, there's a strong argument to be made that a good way to get Mac and Windows users to switch to open source operating systems is to get them interested in open source desktop applications first. And a simple delivery mechanism for those desktop applications greatly h
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I find them to be more hassle than they are worth
There's the problem! It's not the idea that is bad, it is the implementation.