linux = impossible? (no offense meant!)

[Byron Q. Desnoyers Winmill]

There are a couple of things which make installing Linux software so
much more difficult:

 - Dependencies.  (This is my gripe.)  In order to get application A
   working, you need B, C, and D.  In order to get library C working,
   you need E.  Quite often, this is the fault of the packager and
   not the developer (ie. there are many packages where a library is
   optional, but the package maintainer feels that every user wants
   every feature).  Once a package get beyond two levels of
   dependencies, I start reconsidering its value.

 - Choice.  In order to satisfy need A, you have the choice between
   A, B, C, ..., J.  You don't know what these 10 applications are,
   because you have never heard of them before.  Worse yet, at least
   five of them are crap (were partially developed, then everybody lost
   interest) and at least three of them were designed for the esoteric
   tastes of computer obsessives.  Of course, since you don't know
   anything about any of this software, you are left to discover the bad
   apples for yourself.

Is it possible to fix these problems?  Maybe.  With Mac OS X, a number
of the really important unix applications (eg. teTeX) come bundled with
nice installers.  The esoteric ones are largely ignored (or may be taken
up by fink, I don't know).  In that case, you are making life easier
because you are eliminating decisions which must be made by the user.
It is also interesting to note that most of the nicely packaged software
does not have extensive dependencies.  It is also interesting to note
that Mac OS X takes care or many dependencies -- 10.3 actually has a
competent collection of command line utilities.  (Examples include:
fetchmail, procmail, and stuff developed by Apple for system and disk
management.  The latter is the most impressive!)

But most existing Linux users are going to reject that route at the end
of the day because they are accustomed to making those decisions and
even experimenting.  Anything else would be like having a unix shell,
and a straight jacket.

There is another problem with unix, which I think is less legitimate:
people are scared of the command line and following instructions.  Most
people simply want to click a button and be done with it.  It doesn't
matter if typing 'pkg_add some_package' is equivalent, because you
actually have to follow an instruction to do this.  By following an
instruction, I mean that the user is doing something other than running
a program in the typical way.  (For many years, dragging an icon from a
floppy diskette to the hard drive was the acceptable way to install
Macintosh programs.  Even though it was mindnumbingly simple,
installation programs caught on because most minds were too numb to
handle copying files.)  Trying to tell people that our way is easy would
be akin to telling Bush that killing people is generally a bad thing.
You can do it, but they won't listen because they are completely
irrational.

Screaming your head off is going to get yourself nowhere.  It is
probably better to let people make their own decisions, so that they
leave you to make your own decisions.

Byron.

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, JoeHill wrote:
> It's really *not* that difficult, it's just a different process than
> most people are used to, so the perception is that it is more difficult.
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