Even as a Windows guy, I was wondering: Why would you use anything else than the terminal? When you understand deb packages then you only want the terminal. Everyone else, will want to use a UI and will have no idea what a deb file is.

Everyone understands the paradigm of double clicking an icon to launch the program or an installer. Many aren't going to understand the exact command they need to type into a terminal to get it to do what they want. This is almost always the answer for why people don't want to resort to using a terminal, discoverability. You can look it up, of course, but there's no good reason imo to not include GDebi for users unfamiliar with that workflow. Other distributions have it by default, but Cannonical is favoring their own tech here over the needs of the users. One more useless roadblock.

My dad runs Ubuntu at home. He's completely computer-illiterate. When I need to help him install something over the phone, it's really nice to be able to have him download a .deb, double-click on it, and it just works. I've done this numerous times over the phone with him... it would take me an hour just to get him to type apt install properly.

For me the struggle is: is the package called libcairo-devel, libcairo2-dev, cairo-dev or something else, i hate running a search everytime

Oh yeah, used to be at least two more ways. Not sure which one of these are not possible but anymore, but you used to be able to do:

1) Synaptic package manager which is a GUI for searching and installing .debs. My first exposure to a package manager when I first installed Ubuntu some 12 years ago.

2) Simply double-clicking on the file, opening the Gdebi (I think?) UI for installing that specific .deb file.

In my experience, simply double clicking on the file never actually worked for installing debs. The UI would pop up, give me a nice pleasant "Install" button, but clicking it would either no-op, crash the UI, show a progress bar that stalled out, or act like everything worked perfectly but not actually install it. Command line install works flawlessly every time.

Judging by your other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22954061) you were using Software Center for the installing. Gdebi was working fine back before Software Center.

I was using whatever popped up in a default Ubuntu VM when I double clicked a .deb file. If they've chosen to make that not the best software for installing .deb's... lets just say I can see why people say Linux distributions tend to be user-unfreindly.

Ok, great story, but not really relevant to the conversation around the difference ways you can install a .deb, which is the subject of this particular sub-thread.

Synaptic should still work at least for the X session. I haven't used it in a while, but it is a really good package manager. They got it right a decade ago.

I like the simplicity of Eddy for installing packages https://github.com/donadigo/eddy

It works marvelously for me. Never stumbled upon an issue with it.

In 18.04 you can install via the Software Center

This almost never actually worked in my experience. It was more of an annoyance than not even pretending to work, because I'd take time trying to get things to install in the UI and they wouldn't work before I eventually needed to revert to CLI.

My experience mirrors yours. Could never get double-click on .deb to work, same symptoms, and Software Center was always buggy/frustrating. dpkg -i all the way, but that's definitely a ux hit for broader adoption of Ubuntu.

Ah... I want to like Linux. I really do. But I regularly install software across MacOS, Windows, Debian, and CentOS, and the only time I have trouble installing is for .deb/.rpm/.snap.

Installing on Windows is run the installer and click through the guided wizard. Annoying, but it works and it’s foolproof so whatever.

Installing on MacOS is unzip and click and the application is already running. Drag over to ~/Applications if I want to. Easy as fuck.

Installing on Linux is trying to remember what apt-get/snap/dpkg/etc. I need, then on top of that what --dangerous or --classic or I don’t even know what all else I need, and cross my fingers and hope it works. It’s honestly aggravating.

apt install ./package.deb installs the package and dependencies in one go.

Exactly!