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Comment by GekkePrutser | Hacker News Reader

Ever used Linux? ;)

The way Linux puts the package manager front-and-center is pretty cool, but in my experience it doesn't result in a very up-to-date system. You might have a version of OpenOffice that is years out of date. Oh, you want the latest version? You need to update your Ubuntu 16.04 first, it'll say!

I'm a programmer and still this makes no sense to me. Windows and Mac somehow let me use the latest OpenOffice even if I haven't updated my OS in forever.

You’re looking for a rolling release or something like flatpak, rather than an LTS.

Sure, but why? I can easily install the latest Firefox on Windows XP most likely (or could until a few years ago), but I can't on Ubuntu 20.04 (or couldn't until Firefox started doing auto updates on Ubuntu as well)?

Because Linux folks like to bash on Windows, while in reality they live like every application would be putting their stuff into C:\Windows, like Windows used to do in the old day pre-XP.

So naturally when all applications depend on the same shared libraries and configuration files, they need to be updated on a full swoop.

Yeah, when one knows their way around UNIX it is possible to actually install new software that works around this, but that is exactly the problem for most desktop users, "one knows their way around UNIX".

>C:\Windows, like Windows used to do in the old day pre-XP.

No.

Yes.

> while in reality they live like every application would be putting their stuff into C:\Windows, like Windows used to do in the old day pre-XP.

I hate that you are correct, at least to some extent. In that analogy, the / directory is really C:/Windows, with everything attached under that.

What have we done. Perhaps Mac OS got at least one thing right: /Applications and /Users at the top level.

And you can easily install the same from the snap store if that’s what you want. Linux always gives you choices.

> Oh, you want the latest version? You need to update your Ubuntu 16.04 first, it'll say!

Well, yes, that's the flipside of updating everything at the same time. You have to update everything :)

And if you're using an LTS version of an OS, you'll usually get a related LTS version of the apps from the same era, especially for the older OS versions. Because they prioritise production stability. If you just use it as a working desktop you'd be better off using the bi-yearly versions.

On my Linux systems, both server and desktop there are a set of programs that I don’t use the package manager for, because they’re usually out of date.

This includes browsers, where I let the auto updates handle it, and programming environments (Python, R, Node), where I often use their specific updaters.

I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a global curated package manager to stay on top of the bleeding edge all the time.

I think we can safely assume that the answer to that question is “no” for most of the people in this thread complaining about the desktop!

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