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Comment by ikfmpwdsoz | Hacker News Reader

Huh? Binaries downloaded off the Internet work just as fine on Linux as they do on Windows! Package managers just give you very convenient updating and a chain of trust to greatly reduce the risk of installing malware; and these are things people definitely want - see the App Store, the Play Store, Homebrew, Chocolatey, etc.

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> Binaries downloaded off the Internet work just as fine on Linux as they do on Windows!

If that is true, then why do developers keep telling Linux people that distribution to Linux Desktop is a problem? What issue do AppImage and Snap and FlatPak exist to try and solve?

> and these are things people definitely want - see the App Store, the Play Store, Homebrew, Chocolatey, etc.

Chocolatey has a paltry install base, Homebrew is only used by developers, and you don't really get a choice about the mobile stores.

Linux is a headache for two reasons: (1) because it's basically packaging your app for half a dozen different app stores, so you need tools that make that easier for you, and (2) lots of frameworks have no, buggy or unwieldy Linux support, because Linux had such a small userbase. So you're right, it is more of a headache for the developer, but the end user has a much nicer experience (it can't be overstated how nice it is to be able to install almost anything with one command, and update everything with another). Of course, binaries can be downloaded off the Internet just like on Windows, and some apps, like Chrome, will even keep themselves up-to-date without a package manager, again like on Windows, but each app having its own messy, non-standardized updating scheme is something of an antipattern on Linux, even if it's par for the course on Windows.

> it is more of a headache for the developer, but the end user has a much nicer experience (it can't be overstated how nice it is to be able to install almost anything with one command, and update everything with another)

It's a trade off. For that you're giving up control as a user about what can and cannot be installed on your system, you're giving up portable applications, being able to have applications on different media, having different versions of the same applications, etc.

I'm an end user too, and I don't want to make that trade off. I imagine there are many others who agree.

I still don't understand - you can still have a standalone executable if you want, nothing's stopping you! Package managers just streamline the common case of "I just want to install some software on this computer and have it update automatically". Linux has all the freedom of Windows and more.

> I still don't understand - you can still have a standalone executable if you want, nothing's stopping you!

Try it some time. See how much of your Linux Desktop software you can actually acquire that way without a whole lot of work.

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