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Comment by jorvi | Hacker News Reader

But apt-get can get in pretty bad (almost unrecoverable) states concerning dependencies. The only OS that has updates down to perfection is macOS, sadly.

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"The only OS that has updates down to perfection is macOS, sadly."

Even if that was true, it is valid only for system packages. Updating any other application means one of the three things:

    1. Manual updates (and don't get me started on uninstalling).
    2. Brew (which can be a hell of it's own kind).
    3. Apple Store (a.k.e. the walled garden).

I'll rather stick with apt, thank you very much.

For completeness' sake, there's also MacPorts (and Fink, but I don't know anyone who's actually used it).

MacPorts is also hell for various reasons (not the least of which being the effectively-nonexistent integration with the rest of macOS, keeping its own little silo of an OS that gets huge if you install even relatively-simple graphical applications).

1. What? Almost every app uses Sparkle for seamless updates. And macOS has been lauded for a long time as having the simplest install and uninstall process. Drag into /Applications = installed, drag to trashcan = uninstalled. Snaps/Flatpaks will finally bring that to Linux

2. Again, what? Brew is dead-simple. `brew install whatever` and `brew remove whatever` work like butter.

3. Triple what. Sandboxed apps that cleanly update, with a gatekeeper that makes sure no trash comes through? And I can manually sideload stuff if I absolutely need to? Hell yes.

I have a pretty strong feeling you're a Linux elitist, probably running Arch. All the stuff you point out about macOS is plain wrong, and you'd know within a day of using.

And I have a pretty strong feeling that you are a Mac fanboi, jumping to a conclusion despite hints against it, simply because someone criticised your religi^H^H^H operating system of choice. ;-)

1. Oh yes, Mac has the easiest installation process. Deinstallation, not so much -- yes, you can draw your app to trashcan, but that leaves bunch of data files, configurations (depending on the app) etc on the disk. That is the reason for existence of a number of uninstallation utilities like AppCleaner or AppDelete (my tool of choice). And while Sparkle is useful, it is a third-party effort and not aprt of the OS.

2. Oh yes, brew is simple, there is no doubt about that. Except when a package becomes corrupted (e.g. while upgrading, or when there are missing dependencies, or when you accidentally install the same thing in two different ways), in which case it becomes a nightmare to untangle.

3. Oh yes, the gatekeeper is very useful -- unless you disagree with it about what represents "trash". And honestly, my strong belief is that Apple is going to restrict the other ways to install apps in favour of the Apple Store, moving towards a "desktop iOS"; which is perfectly fine if you just want to use certain apps, but isn't if you're a software developer building anything other than MacOS or iOS apps.

Edit: Just to clarify, I am giving my own opinion and pain points which have been turning me away from the Mac for quite a long time (and it's only getting worse). It is not my intention to force my opinion to anyone else or to pronounce Mac the worst and Linux (or anything else) the best choice. It's simply the case that each OS has it's own realities, and some are better fit for some purposes, and others for others.

Unless you use non supported 3rd party repositories, it never happens. Like never, ever. With snaps on the rise, people will probably not use ppa anymore unless they are tech saavy enough to take care of any (rare) problem.

>Unless you use non supported 3rd party repositories

Or you mix and match releases. I usually keep Sid sources enabled, so that I can quickly build a newer version of this or that package if necessary; 90% of the time this works flawlessly, but when it comes to complex stuff like python, the dependency graph can get a bit borked if I'm not careful. (Yeah yeah, not supported, but as I said most of the times it works just fine.)

Whereas Windows Update just screws up periodically on its own. Sometimes it sits at 0% for hours then BANG! 60 updates installed, please reboot. Once I had 100+ updates to apply and I couldn't see any progress, so I killed the wusua service and observed the download folder immediately filling up with packages, which clearly Windows was keeping somewhere else while lying about download progress. Then there are the times when it just refuses to install this or that update and doesn't tell you why...

>The only OS that has updates down to perfection is macOS, sadly.

Really? Update downloads restart once in a while for no apparent reason. Also, installing Xcode after already having the command line tools messed up everything for me last week.

Yeah, I've done that, by installing bad debs :(

But sometimes, the broken packages error is illusory. Just a few days ago, I was installing some old thing on Debian jessie, and got that it depended on openssl (0.9.8). But apt wasn't going to install that. So I get that jessie has openssl (1.0.1). Hopeless? No. It turns out that both versions can actually coexist.

Even apt-get at its worst is better than Windows Update at its best, though. I reckon that to be closer to the GP's point.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only person who's shot themselves in the foot by following apt-gets recommendations

This isn't a problem with snaps (https://snapcraft.io), which bundle their dependencies. They're also transactional: if the update fails it just rolls back to the last known-good state.

> The only OS that has updates down to perfection is macOS, sadly.

Yeah.... I like the huge downloads and the regular prompts for my apple account password when installing an update best.

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