laptoplogic.com — Installing Linux applications can be a bit tricky if you're used to working with Windows or Mac. But don't worry, Laptop Logic's Linux guru Blair Mathis walks you through the do's and dont's in this extensive how-to.
Jan 19, 2009 View in Crawl 4
dottykJan 20, 2009
Huh why do people take so much pain just to install apps ?
Closed AccountJan 20, 2009
I know...
Closed AccountJan 20, 2009
I didn't have to do all that crap to install Flash in my version of Linux..Oh wait.that' Ubuntu...
sexyboboJan 20, 2009
open up synaptic and double click on the package you want to install. Command lines save you a bunch of time and are incredibly useful which is why almost all linux users will tell you the command to do something. that being said though lots of linux distros especially ubuntu have been working on making every thing user friendly and eliminating the need for the command line and have done a great job i cant think of one thing you need the command line for it is just quicker with it.Truth fully linux is a lot quicker at installing most applications as sudo apt-get install vlc is a lot quicker then finding there website and then the version you need then downloading and installing it.
schottyJan 20, 2009
The reason it doesnt include static links to the libraries is for security and simplicity. The best example is the infamous zlib bug. Put simple, there was a nasty flaw that was discovered in zlib.so and a simple fix. So literally a few hours after discovery, all the distros updated zlib's packages. Well that didn't fix everyone's problems. Anyone who had a static linked binary was still vulnerable. What happened was that developers that statically linked created more work for themselves. For no good reason.Now on the simplicity side, it comes down to space and money. If you can reduce the package size and just require a shared library that is a few 100k to save 35x100K for each user, that adds up. and that 35x100K adds up even further when you take into account the updates (and linux software is updated much more rapidly than anything else out there). So from a bandwidth and disk space front, its cheaper and cleaner.Really, this is all moot -- the user really doesnt have to worry at all providing the software is all packaged up and in the repos that are installed. If the user adds ther pmfusion repo, it wouldn't matter if someone starts splitting up any package into several packages, since if the software needs it, the package manager will know and fix it all automatically.
schottyJan 20, 2009
Its getting rather rare though. I just got Fedora 10 slapped onto a eeePC and it was nominal effort. I added 3 repo files and that was it, the rest could come down the pipe -- rpmfusion's 2 and Adobe's Flash one. My wifi drivers, all software, flash, java. The only individual package I needed was cedega (gotta have my WoW :P )