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Comment by cycloptic | Hacker News Reader

Please do not baselessly accuse me of being "disingenuous," I'm trying to help you. If you won't use GoboLinux or ask packagers to make AppImages for the apps you want then I don't know what to say, those are solutions to your problem. If you're saying you want all other distributions to be like GoboLinux, I doubt that would happen because that comes with its own set of other problems. Edit: You can do some pretty interesting things here with Nix/Guix too although that still requires a package manager. The reason I said AppImages is because that's currently the best method that doesn't require any package manager at all.

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> Please do not baselessly accuse me of being "disingenuous," I'm trying to help you.

Help me with what exactly? Am I in need of saving for my denial of The One True UNIX Way?

> If you won't use GoboLinux or ask packagers to make AppImages for the apps you want then I don't know what to say, those are solutions to your problem.

There are lots of reasons I don't use GoboLinux, not the least of which is that I don't think compiling applications from source is a reasonable application distribution method in 2021. As for asking application developers to make AppImages: why do you assume that I don't?

Regardless, the point is that the "Linux filesystem organization story" referred to by the parent is neither GoboLinux nor a bunch of AppImages and you are being disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It's a tired old Linux Desktop evangelism tactic roughly equivalent to "well, Linux is just a kernel...", which is to say that the argument is that what Linux Desktop (and by extension its filesystem organization) is is so ill defined that it can be whatever you want it to be -- provided you write most of it yourself, from the kernel up, like Android.

However there is a clear "way things are done" for the vast, vast majority of Linux distros and that is obviously what's being talked about here.

I haven't "pretended otherwise" or evangelized anything, please don't make these accusations at me. I can only offer you suggestions on what to do, I'm not going to argue about what the "right" way to do is as that's simply not interesting to me. The vast majority of Linux distributions may not do things the "right" way but they also support AppImages, so use that to your advantage. If you had no success in getting upstream to make AppImages then you'll have to make them yourself. It seems that's what a lot of flatpak and snap packagers ended up doing, just my observation.

To put this another way: We can sit here making the same complaints about Ubuntu and RHEL that have been made for decades, but what's the point? Let's do something about it. And if that doing something means we turn the whole system into AppImages, then... what else would you really want? It sounds like your problem would then be solved.

> I can only offer you suggestions on what to do,

Why are you doing that? I clearly neither asked for, nor want your suggestions! That's why you come off as an evangelist.

It seems like you were having trouble with your Linux filesystem so I'm offering solutions that I've seen or heard of. Is there something else I can offer that would work better for you, or am I misunderstanding what the complaint is?

Edit: If you weren't asking for help with this that's fine, however some other interested reader may want to hear the suggestions. Feel free to ignore me.

Can I refer you to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I have no idea how you got the idea that cycloptic was being disingenuous, evangelising or trying to save you "for my denial of The One True UNIX Way".

> I clearly neither asked for, nor want your suggestions! (from below)

On HN most people like to chip in what they think might be suggestions. Either say thanks, but no thanks, or just say nothing instead of being rather rude.

> I have no idea how you got the idea that cycloptic was being disingenuous, evangelising or trying to save you "for my denial of The One True UNIX Way".

I have no other way to explain the sequence of events that occurred. I expressed doubt that anyone could think the Linux file hierarchy organization was "nice", they responded that it isn't "required" and that AppImage exists. What are they trying to convince me of? What "help" did my post suggest that I needed?

I'm sorry, I'm trying to be reasonable here, but no one has yet explained to me how else I could possibly have interpreted that post.

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