When being configurable is more important than being useful
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@topspin I think that configurability can add unneeded complexity, forcing all users to suffer from any resulting bugs.
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@topspin said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
That's an argument that is often made about open-source stuff. And it's perfectly reasonable, but only if the default settings are appropriate for average users.Too often "you can configure everything!" is used as an excuse to mean "you'll have to spend 30 minutes tweaking everything to make it suck less".
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@Jaloopa because shipping OS with two subsystems that all applications must be aware of and compatible with both is totally the same as a slight tweak to the behavior of window movement.
He's essentially arguing against left-handed mouse buttons option. Which is surprising because I always thought of Raymond as a very reasonable guy. But maybe UX isn't his fortę.
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@topspin They should create software for the audience they want to have. I don't know what that is, you'd have to ask them.
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@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@Jaloopa because shipping OS with two subsystems that all applications must be aware of and compatible with both is totally the same as a slight tweak to the behavior of window movement.
He's essentially arguing against left-handed mouse buttons option. Which is surprising because I always thought of Raymond as a very reasonable guy. But maybe UX isn't his fortę.
No, he's not arguing against mouse-button-side-switch. That's an option the OS manages and unless the application does something blatantly stupid like processing the "NC" versions of the click messages (WS-FTP, I'm looking at you!), it doesn't notice the difference. What he's arguing against is options where the programmatic usage varies depending on the value of the option, but the option's value is not managed by the program. His example is options where we must load a different DLL to manage the option, and we must create different versions of resources like button windows, and we must handle their messages in different ways. There is no tidy way of managing that sort of thing that doesn't involve some level of ery.
Usage: The normal spelling in English of "forte" does not have the twiddle under the "e".
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@blakeyrat Judging from their software, the answer is "None".
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@Zerosquare said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
This is actually a good policy if, like most Linux projects, they're suffering from a severe lack of manpower. Saves a lot of testing hours.
It's a good policy if you know and care about which features your users need most. Which means, among other things, listening to users feedback.
But GNOME doesn't do that. Instead they use the method: "we remove stuff because we can, and we don't have to listen because we know better".
Sometimes it is (GNOME is heavily design-driven) sometimes it isn't (Nautilus removing features because they are poorly maintained).
By the way, I like the fact that there is some design drive in GNOME, as OSS DEs tend to just cram feature after feature with little logic in their stuff (this approach has its merits too, tbh). GNOME have since softened their approach somewhat.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@Jaloopa because shipping OS with two subsystems that all applications must be aware of and compatible with both is totally the same as a slight tweak to the behavior of window movement.
He's essentially arguing against left-handed mouse buttons option. Which is surprising because I always thought of Raymond as a very reasonable guy. But maybe UX isn't his fortę.
No, he's not arguing against mouse-button-side-switch. That's an option the OS manages and unless the application does something blatantly stupid like processing the "NC" versions of the click messages (WS-FTP, I'm looking at you!), it doesn't notice the difference. What he's arguing against is options where the programmatic usage varies depending on the value of the option, but the option's value is not managed by the program.
If that's the case, then it's completely irrelevant to the topic.
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@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
it's completely irrelevant to the topic
When did that ever stop us? Or are you in disguise?
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@dkf you're no longer welcome here.
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@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@stillwater "ą" sounds like a French trying to say "on". While "a" sounds like a normal person saying "a".
@Goska
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@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@dkf you're no longer welcome here.
I am certainly very, very tired of hearing about this.
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@The_Quiet_One said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
I like the inconsistency between "upper" and "top" the best.
Also, what is the difference between "Maximize" and "Fill Screen"?
Oh god. What if they're accounting for programs with a fixed aspect ratio? "Maximize" would make it fill at least one dimension without overflowing, while "Fill Screen" would make sure the entire screen is filled even if the program's window goes outside one/some of the boundaries.
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@ben_lubar They just don't like their cheese moved, ever.
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@ben_lubar said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
I am certainly very, very tired of hearing about this.
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
supposedly solves this only 20 years after it should have been solved
So how would you solve it?
Recently I tried this new Windows thing that's come out, and it doesn't have any kind of package repository at all. You just download an unsigned binary, run it (because it's an executable file, natch, because all the cool kids are piping random scripts to root shells these days to install stuff), and it shits files randomly all over the filesystem. Great.
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Recently I tried this new Windows thing that's come out, and it doesn't have any kind of package repository at all.
Something something Windows Store wharrgarbl.
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
and it doesn't have any kind of package repository at all
Well, now it does. The Windows Store. The fact that most applications can't be provided that way, because the sandboxing is too tight for most purposes (OK, I didn't look recently, but it was quite a bit tighter than Android and trying to do something like collaborating apps was effectively futile—plus store apps always worked in the tablet/mobile view, not windowed) notwithstanding.
(As usual, in the Linux land, instead of collaborating on the community solution—flatpak—Canonical is trying to push its own way—snaps)
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
because it's an executable file, natch, because all the cool kids are piping random scripts to root shells these days to install stuff
Well, piping to root shell is the Linux thing. And, to be honest, a rpm or deb package is effectively the same, since the pre and post-install scripts are not jailed in any way either. As is, of course, any Windows installer.
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@bb36e said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@topspin I think that configurability can add unneeded complexity, forcing all users to suffer from any resulting bugs.
Some dumbass once said, "Everything should be as simple as it can be, Says Einstein, But not simpler."
But...when we're talking about software, that begs the question of what you want something to be in the first place.
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
So how would you solve it?
Not tie application versions to OS versions. You know, how Mac OS, Windows, OS/2, Amiga Workbench, etc. all worked before Linux distributions created the problem in the first place.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Recently I tried this new Windows thing that's come out,
You're a fucking liar.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
and it doesn't have any kind of package repository at all.
I'm sorry, what decade is it in this little liar scenario told by a liar? Because Windows has had one for ages. And guess what: it doesn't tie application version to Windows version. Amazing.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
You just download an unsigned binary,
It'll warn you if you're about to run an unsigned binary.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
run it (because it's an executable file, natch, because all the cool kids are piping random scripts to root shells these days to install stuff),
Well you could at minimum see if it's signed.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
and it shits files randomly all over the filesystem.
All the Windows named folders have reasonably good names and a singular purpose. If you're constantly having to deal with unsigned binaries and installers that "shit files randomly", you're probably installing badly-ported Linux software.
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@Bulb said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
As is, of course, any Windows installer.
At least MSI installers (the correct way of doing it) can be reliably reversed. AFAIK, but you could probably break that protection somehow.
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Not tie application versions to OS versions. You know, how Mac OS, Windows, OS/2, Amiga Workbench, etc. all worked before Linux distributions created the problem in the first place.
Can you explain how application versions are in any sense "tied to OS versions"? That's pretty much not a thing.
Maybe you're confusing it with "old OSes tend to have old versions of software, because newer versions hadn't been written then". If you're running a four-year-old OS, I'd love to know how out of the box it would be packaged with brand new 2018 software.
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@jmp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@stillwater "ą" sounds like a French trying to say "on". While "a" sounds like a normal person saying "a".
@Goska
I think he's making a distinction between
Goska - correct
Ghostka - incorrect
Gooska - incorrect
Kefka - wtf?
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Can you explain how application versions are in any sense "tied to OS versions"?
Can you explain to me why you lied to me about using Windows? You liar?
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
That's pretty much not a thing.
Explain this whole post to me then.
This is a lunix-y open source developer getting pissed-off at a distro for shipping a version of his product (which, BTW, is one of the only reliable ways to get screenlocking in that disaster known as X11 and therefore is critical to security) that's years and years out-of-date, resulting in his receiving constant bug reports for bugs he fixed years ago.
Because of this, some time ago he programmed in a "time bomb" where if you were running a version that was ages out-of-date, it'll pop up a little warning dialog so at least users were aware of this.
The Debian people/idiots (whose crack security code reviewers, BTW, completely missed that dialog in their no-doubt thorough quality assurance process), instead of actually respecting the author's wishes and removing the screensaver from their distro, instead just commented-out the warning. Because apparently they were garbage people.
But none of this would have happened if they hadn't been shipping a years-old version of the screensaver in the first place. Which they were, because the software version was tied to the OS version. Which is the thing we are now talking about.
And yes I realize that "pretty much" are weasel-words, but I'm going to ignore those for the moment because fuck weasel-words.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Maybe you're confusing it with "old OSes tend to have old versions of software, because newer versions hadn't been written then". If you're running a four-year-old OS, I'd love to know how out of the box it would be packaged with brand new 2018 software.
So you're telling me if you install Debian right now, and run the "update all whatever" utility, you'll end up with the current version of JWZ's screensaver app and not the years-old-of-date-now-with-the-out-of-date-warning-patched-out version? And that JWZ is a liar about all of this? Even though Debian's own bug report confirms its true?
You are a twice-liar, you have doubled-down on lies.
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This post is deleted!
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anonymous234's answer is better than mine. (And we already know he's not arguing in good faith, because he lied about when he first tried Windows to make some kind of idiotic rhetorical point. He could have phrased it as a hypothetical and not been a liar.)
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Can you explain how application versions are in any sense "tied to OS versions"? That's pretty much not a thing.
Look, I get the feeling you're not exactly arguing in good faith here. But just in case, let's recap the whole damn thing again:
- Linux generally uses or encourages using centralized repositories. This third party apps are repackaged and distributed by Ubuntu or Debian or whoever.
- This sucks because applications are not updated as often. Sometimes being 5 years out of date.
- Some idiots claim this is a good thing because they want their OS to be "stable", which is fine, but it makes no sense because apps are not a fucking part of the OS you goddamn idiots. Does Windows 7 ship with Firefox 3.5? No it doesn't. It ships with an API that can run software created after it. It's not that fucking hard to understand.
- The solution is to have all software update from its own server. A worse solution is to let developers push updates to the central server without manual intervention from the OS makers (the app store model).
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Not tie application versions to OS versions. You know, how Mac OS, Windows, OS/2, Amiga Workbench, etc. all worked before Linux distributions created the problem in the first place.
Can you explain how application versions are in any sense "tied to OS versions"? That's pretty much not a thing.
He can't get his head around package managers being tied to particular distro releases. Mostly because he doesn't comprehend package managers and also to defend the sort of pathological backwards compatibility you kind of get with Windows. Although less so now. I'm sure he can't see the contradiction in the fact that you can't continue to get old versions of software for older operating systems in app stores (that I've seen, anyways).
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
So you're telling me if you install Debian right now, and run the "update all whatever" utility, you'll end up with the current version of JWZ's screensaver app and not the years-old-of-date-now-with-the-out-of-date-warning-patched-out version?
No, because it's not packaged with that out-of-the-box.
There is nothing stopping you or anyone else packaging a newer one.
Are you telling me that I can install the latest Windows distro and have the most up-to-date versions of everything ever written for every version of Windows ever?
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@anonymous234 So either use the stuff packaged by the distribution, or use the stuff packaged by the software author - whichever suits your needs.
I don't get why this is a problem.
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@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
No, because it's not packaged with that out-of-the-box.
What is "it" in this context? Debian?
Then explain the post I asked you to explain, which only makes sense if the version of the software is locked to the version of the OS.
Or are you using more weasel-words like "it has to be downloaded therefore it's out out-of-the-box because there's no physical box"? Because in that case: fuck you.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
There is nothing stopping you or anyone else packaging a newer one.
Then why hasn't anybody working at Debian done it?
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Are you telling me that I can install the latest Windows distro and have the most up-to-date versions of everything ever written for every version of Windows ever?
No. It won't run 16-bit apps on modern computers. So you can't use the most up-to-date version of, say, VisiCalc.
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Tying software versions to OS versions is the dumbest idea of all the dumb ideas in the Linux ecosystem.
Arch linux uses fresh versions of packages. You can even install packages that are tied to the upstream authors' git repos
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@bb36e Ok.
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@gordonjcp Because almost all Linux distros heavily encourage the first option, which is the worse one. Therefore Linux sux. Q.E.D.
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@blakeyrat so no explanation as to why you were lying in the quoted post? Do you just come here to stir up shit?
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@anonymous234 said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Linux generally uses or encourages using centralized repositories. This third party apps are repackaged and distributed by Ubuntu or Debian or whoever.
It used to work much better than in Windows, because Windows users were stuck hunting down software all over the internet and installing it manually. Which Linux users could always do as well, but because of the differences between POSIX systems, such installation is usually harder.
With the growing amount of software, it has outlived its usefulness unfortunately. Every development tool has now its repository/market. And the other software is left in disarray, either with a huge set of PPAs or their own installers.
Still, Windows store is, due to the limitations for the applications, not an option for many things, so Windows are not any better off, with nothing to handle application updates either. Many applications handle it themselves, at huge cost for everybody. The rest does not, with cost of dealing with bugs for ancient versions.
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@bb36e said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@blakeyrat so no explanation as to why you were lying in the quoted post? Do you just come here to stir up shit?
Just because one distro does it differently doesn't mean the others are all correct also.
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@The_Quiet_One said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
I like the inconsistency between "upper" and "top" the best.
Also, what is the difference between "Maximize" and "Fill Screen"?
I would guess "Fill Screen" stretches the window to cover every pixel of real estate on the screen, while "Maximize" removes the borders and stretches the window's content canvas to cover the entire screen (possibly including the menu bar(s), but perhaps changing them to pop up along the top edge).
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@ben_lubar said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
I don't think URL slugs can have question marks in them.
What about any of the following?
%3F
%E2%8D%B0
%E2%9D%93
%E2%9D%94
%EF%B8%96
%EF%B9%96
%EF%BC%9F
%EF%BF%BD
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@djls45 said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@ben_lubar said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@Gąska said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
I don't think URL slugs can have question marks in them.
What about any of the following?
%3F
%E2%8D%B0
%E2%9D%93
%E2%9D%94
%EF%B8%96
%EF%B9%96
%EF%BC%9F
%EF%BF%BDI don't think NodeBB allows URL slugs to have percent signs in them either.
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Explain this whole post to me then.
JWZ is ranting and completely out of touch with reality.
Users do run ancient software. That's a fact of life. There are zillions of people still running Windows XP and pretty ancient versions of everything on that, because newer versions often don't work on XP. It works for them, so they don't want to upgrade. It has bugs, but they already know the bugs and their workflow goes around them. A bug in the hand is better than two in the bush or something like that.
Contrary to the popular belief, software does not actually bit rot. It keeps doing what it always had. It may be found out it is insecure (in which case Debian developers do patch it), which might make it unsuitable for many uses, but it won't just stop doing what it always did.
Unless it has a “time bomb”, which is a bug, because everybody expects software to keep doing what it always did. So it got removed. Because it broke user expectations. Upstream authors are not particularly relevant to Debian. Users are. And that's only sensible—there are much more users than authors.
It wasn't removed from the archive, because no self-respecting repository will ever remove things that were already published (except for legal issues, probably). How many times people bitch about Microsoft, or Google, or somebody breaking something in the latest release that was pushed on them. With Debian you can be sure the previous version is still there to fall back to.
@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
But none of this would have happened if they hadn't been shipping a years-old version of the screensaver in the first place. Which they were, because the software version was tied to the OS version.
This is still non-sequitur. They are shipping an old version of the OS, for the benefit of users who don't want to upgrade and deal with random breakage that falls out of it, and they are shipping old version of the software. But they are not tied together. Users can install different version if they want. From newer archives, from packages provided by upstream (it was always a thing for RedHat-derived systems; and is becoming more common for Debian-based ones as the number of packages grows and the core team can't keep up), from sources. Windows users always had to do that—until recently they've got the store, but because it requires some porting to package things, a lot of things still has to be hunted down. Linux users had the option to install things from the repository. It was, and is, strictly superior, even if the software is sometimes old.
And last but not least, it is not clear where the distinction between OS and apps should be. Windows have quite a few built-in apps, and if you include that kind of apps in the OS, screensaver definitely counts as part of OS. So they have to ship it anyway.
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@Bulb said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
(OK, I didn't look recently,
Since Windows 8 you mean? Because that's what you're describing. And there's also Chocolatey.
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@Bulb said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Users do run ancient software. That's a fact of life.
Especially Debian users, SINCE THEIR OS PROVIDED IT FOR THEM, THEN LOCKED THE VERSION OF IT.
@Bulb said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
This is still non-sequitur. They are shipping an old version of the OS, for the benefit of users who don't want to upgrade and deal with random breakage that falls out of it, and they are shipping old version of the software. But they are not tied together.
Then why do all those Debian users have a version of the screensaver from 2014.
@Bulb said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
And last but not least, it is not clear where the distinction between OS and apps should be. Windows have quite a few built-in apps, and if you include that kind of apps in the OS, screensaver definitely counts as part of OS. So they have to ship it anyway.
If the screensaver is the only reliable way of locking the screen because they're using X11 which is utter ass-shit, then sure, it should be a feature of the OS because being able to lock the screen is a reasonable user expectation.
The user might also reasonably expect the SECURITY CRITICAL software to be updated so there's no security flaws. But, alas, they're shipping a version from 2014.
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Are you telling me that I can install the latest Windows distro and have the most up-to-date versions of everything ever written for every version of Windows ever?
No. It won't run 16-bit apps on modern computers. So you can't use the most up-to-date version of, say, VisiCalc.
Side note: But of course someone is working on getting this to happen:
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
So how would you solve it?
Not tie application versions to OS versions. You know, how Mac OS, Windows, OS/2, Amiga Workbench, etc. all worked before Linux distributions created the problem in the first place.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Recently I tried this new Windows thing that's come out,
You're a fucking liar.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
and it doesn't have any kind of package repository at all.
I'm sorry, what decade is it in this little liar scenario told by a liar? Because Windows has had one for ages. And guess what: it doesn't tie application version to Windows version. Amazing.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
You just download an unsigned binary,
It'll warn you if you're about to run an unsigned binary.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
run it (because it's an executable file, natch, because all the cool kids are piping random scripts to root shells these days to install stuff),
Well you could at minimum see if it's signed.
@gordonjcp said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
and it shits files randomly all over the filesystem.
All the Windows named folders have reasonably good names and a singular purpose. If you're constantly having to deal with unsigned binaries and installers that "shit files randomly", you're probably installing badly-ported Linux software.
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@Bulb said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
With Debian you can be sure the previous version is still there to fall back to.
But getting is is damn difficult.
I still don't know how to meaningfully reverse an
apt-get upgrade
that broke all the applications.I was literally chewing off my fingernails when I updated
certbot
(because it needed a new python, natch) and two full pages of dependencies said they would be removed/added/upgraded, including MySQL (which failed, natch).Thank $deity the failure to upgrade the database engine did not impact its ability to run (like it normally does). Well, actually, nevermind, I didn't restart it because you can yoink files under apps and therefore didn't restart MySQL. I'm willing to bet three hours of time and effort that if I restart it now, it will inevitably crash and burn and won't come up...
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@bb36e said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
@blakeyrat so no explanation as to why you were lying in the quoted post? Do you just come here to stir up shit?
Yes, but that's not the point
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@anonymous234 said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
It ships with an API that can run software created after it. It's not that fucking hard to understand.
All operating systems can do that. Except for the very specialised or derp-y ones, neither of which applies to this discussion.
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@blakeyrat said in When being configurable is more important than being useful:
Then explain the post I asked you to explain, which only makes sense if the version of the software is locked to the version of the OS.
I don't understand what you mean by "locked to the version of the OS". There is no way to do that, short of actually writing your application to detect what it's running on and go "Nope, not going to work with that", which would be so trivial to get around it's not worth mentioning.
Then why hasn't anybody working at Debian done it?
Maybe they don't see it as a priority. Who gives a fuck about screensavers? What is this, the 90s? Why are you still using a CRT monitor?