this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
37 points (60.2% liked)

linuxmemes

21392 readers
1405 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
    • ย 

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.

    founded 1 year ago
    MODERATORS
    poopsmith
    zephyr
    rtxn
    37
    One of the few times I've downvoted (sh.itjust.works)
    submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/linuxmemes
    52 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

    I mean, what else would double-clicking a .tar.gz file or an appimage do than install it (yes, I know, look into the archive, but really - how often is that the desired thing to do)?

    Personally, I open tarballs quite often. Why? Just wanna know what's inside them.

    Double click translating to install on tar.gz is not wise since anything can be packed in a tarball, a gzip archive or a gzipped tarball.

    And then you have a similar problem with tar.xz (it's becoming more and more popular from what I can see). It doesn't use gzip to compress the archive, it uses LZMA, so you have to use xz instead of gzip to decompress the tarball.

    Basically, it boils down to how UNIX used to work. Mind you, back in the day there were no package managers, it was all done with .tar.zip or make install. This really was hell to be honest... keeping track of what app installed what libraries and versions of it... yes it really was a PITA. This is the real reason why package managers were invented (thank god!) and why having only one package manager on a system is the preferred way to handle apps/software. Otherwise, you'll soon be in dependency hell. Shared libraries are at the core of any UNIX based OS. Yes, Flatpaks/Snaps/AppImages and package managers like nix circumvent this problem, but in no way is the problem gone. It's still there, we just don't mess around with it.

    So, basically the idea of having an "installer" came quite late into the game. Plus, having to check on all dependencies and making an install script that worked on every single distro out there was just so complicated, that no one would ever want to go through with it. Sure, there are install.sh scripts in some pacakges out there, but they basically check nothig, it's more or less "copy this here, that there" which of course could be done by hand anyway... and then run the app and pray it has all of the dependencies it needs ๐Ÿ˜ฌ... which it never does ๐Ÿ˜‚.