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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

Literally this. One thing both Apple and Windows have that Linux does not is, every software has an easy universal package for their respective platform. For Linux if its even in your main package manager its like whatever was "stable" in 2022 or whenever the last major version of Debian / Ubuntu came out, and that's all you get. It's annoying to no end. I now just download AppImage every chance I get.

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Unless something has drastically changed since I switched to Linux around 10 years ago, Windows did not at all have a "universal package". Instead, installing software meant manually downloading an installer from the vendor's website and then manually interacting with that installer through a GUI. Windows installers come in a variety of different (even custom written) formats which essentially make it impossible to automate package management in a universal way.

my biggest point being that Linux package managers carry out of date packages. Unless you want to use arch linux or similar.

Then point your /etc/apt/sources.list to 'testing'.

@giancarlostoro

This is the solution. Use the following web page to compare packages versions from Debian Testing and Fedora 40: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?firstlist=debian&secondlis...

Stop using Debian based distros, this a deliberate choice on their part. Use a rolling release like Fedora.

Use Debian Testing. This is the _rolling_ release from the Debian family.

And don't be fooled by the name of the release: "Testing". The name "Testing" exists due to an orthodox approach of Debian community that only the Debian stable can use "stable".

And ignore the orthodox Debianeers who say "nobody should be using testing".

Testing is not really a rolling release and is not guaranteed to get security updates in a timely manner so it's certainly not for everyone.

Testing is a rolling release for most of the time. As well as Sid is:

Sid [rolling] -> Testing [rolling] -> Stable [point release]

This is only true until testing gets frozen. After a freeze gets lifted again, many transitions might occur. I use it myself but it's wrong to call it a rolling release that everyone should use.

testing is absolutely not a rolling release. Sure it gets new packages faster than stable which can appear to be the same as a rolling release it gets frozen before a stable release and suddenly it's not a rolling release.

So to describe it precisly: Debian Testing is a rolling release for majority of time. When the Stable is going to be released, Testing gets frozen for a while. But then it becomes the rolling release again. Debian stable gets released once in ~2 years. So once in ~2 years Debian testing is not a rolling release.

Fedora isn't more rolling than Debian. That is both have rolling testing vs rawhide but otherwise they are not.

Back then Windows had already blessed Windows Installer packages (.msi), which could be installed unattended from the CLI. But, to be fair, many companies still preferred to use other installer tools, including sometimes Microsoft themselves (e.g. ClickOnce).

But there's been improvements. The winget CLI can now install and update several well-known applications, and even upgrade them when you first downloaded them any other way. There's also the MSIX package format, which is much closer to distro packages or mobile apps, can auto-update without a central repository and supports sandboxing.

Nowadays, even if still a bit hacky, I definitely consider Windows packaging less painful than the mess that is Linux distribution. Packages in distro repositories are regularly outdated, and every other package is installed misconfigured or has been patched in unclear ways by the distro maintainers; then there's Flatpak which make for gigantic installs with clunky sandboxing, or AppImages.

... sorry, this sounds to good to be true.

Usually it works like this (forced to use macOS at work and Windows from time to time for special software): One installs some software from trusted websites (VSCode, VLC, Firefox, etc.) on macOS/Windows, and then when one just wants to get some work done: Update-PopUps, yay. They annoy the hell out of me, especially because there is no unified system for macOS/Windows. Break my flow, wait for download, privilege escalation, installation and starting again. Thank you very much. This happens multiple times a week especially for packages like VSCode, VLC, Office, Outlook, Firefox, KeepassX, Calibre... packages which you don't want to be outdated, ever. It is f*cking ridiculous that I have to take care of this BS in 2024.

On my Linux boxes I login and work. Updates have been silently downloaded and installed for the packages and/or flatpaks and everything is up to date, no annoying update-popups which break my flow and I know that I have the latest version of all software especially security sensitive packages.

At the end, you can pick your poison.

Having integrated/working package management with silent updates is one of my killer features of Linux/Flatpak. I want to set it up one time (automatically) and never have to think about or deal with it again.

When combined with Flatseal as an easy to use privilege granting system, it really is hard to beat.

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