What you want is flatpak or appimage (or even snap). These are self contained distributed binaries that contain and isolate all their dependencies. It is simply a one file download for any linux distro. They work great--I use a ton of flatpak apps like VS Code all the time.

Going to some project's website and trying to find a download to install is not typically how you install software on Linux, and people distributing software like that for Linux probably don't know much about Linux software distribution themselves.

If you want a good experience you should be installing software from the system package manager instead of searching for deb files that are probably out of date and won't work on your system due to shared library compatibility issues. Using the system package manager is much different than what many are used to but it actually works very well. The other option is to use flatpak or similar software, which is designed to sanely handle out of repo software installation.

I think people distributing their own deb/rpm/etc files from their project's website are causing active harm and confusing people who are new to Linux. The best option is to provide a link to the distros package if it exists (https://archlinux.org/packages/foo), instructions on how to build from source and a flatpak image (or similar). When a new user downloads a stray deb and has a bad experience with it (broken software, system breakage, etc) it really leaves a poor impression on them that could have easily been avoided.

The way you've described Linux software distribution sounds an aweful lot like software distribution on mobile devices. I think it should be pretty familiar to everyone by now. If anything I think Windows and macOS want to move closer to being like Linux in this regard.

Maybe the experience of using cli tools like `apt` or `yum` has made people overlook the ease of installing software on Linux. Anyone that has used openSUSE or Ubuntu should know better.

[1] https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nixpkgs/Building_RPM_DEB_with_nixpkg...

I think once that is fixed, a lot of stuff will start improving.

I wrote https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/109/ in hopes Nix can help lead the way here.

It positively surprised me when I did `sudo winget upgrade` (I first did `winget install gerardog.gsudo` in an admin prompt) and it detected and upgraded the majority of the already installed OSS on my Windows workstation.

> What I'm against is the general fragmentation of Linux that makes interoperability between distro's and window managers problematic.

I disagree that downloading software being hard is a major impediment. (though I realize the parent did continue to claim that.) How many people download executables on the regular anyways?

Though that's just my impression, I'd be happy to be proven wrong by someone better informed.

- AppImage. Basically the idea of "Apps" ripped straight out of MacOS and injected right into Linux. Works fine, but clutters your home directory with Another Folder and doesn't integrate with your desktop like a native package.

- Snap. Works on any system that can install snapd, is owned by Canonical (a pro or a con depending on who you ask), but also auto-updates and has occasional performance problems. Plus, snapd is generally kinda fussy.

- Flatpak. Sandboxing taken to it's (il)logical extremes. If you like random data loss, confusing package manifests, low-performance and generally broken software, this is the way to go. Of course, most people like it when their compositor doesn't break when installing third-party programs, so they avoid it like the plauge. It's a uniquely bad format, almost worth spinning up a Linux VM to try it for a laugh. Just make sure to use GNOME, it's useless anywhere else. That's the true hallmark of a cross-distro packaging solution!

So yeah, we're probably due in for Another Competing Standard. At this point though, I think most developers are contented to just ship an RPM and an Arch package and let everyone else figure stuff out for themselves. Honestly, I prefer that approach when compared to the blasted wasteland that is cross-distro package management.

Reality check: since the Steam package is broken so often on NixOS, I ended up using the Flatpak on NixOS instead (which works like a charm).

It's a uniquely bad format, almost worth spinning up a Linux VM to try it for a laugh.

I am not sure what you are talking about. It's actually a really nice format that uses OSTree.

Talk about FUD and taking to logical extremes. Your constant trolling on Linux threads is not appreciated.

I wish I was joking: https://twitter.com/planner_todo/status/1492084099875586049

Try again.

Both of these things can be true at the same time: The library authors ultimately messed it up and could have prevented it by reading documentation better. Flatpak has a footgun and could have prevented it by better dev UX and/or structuring docs differently.

Hopefully this incident is leading to improvements in both.

There's already established ways to do that such as AppImage, which has bonus points (compared to other solutions) for PGP signatures and differential (delta) upgrades. What's lacking is proper desktop environment integration for an ~/Apps folder like you have on MacOS where this pattern of one-file-per-app has been established for longer.

If you want to go one step further, 0install would make it possible to not even have to choose between "Mac", "Windows" and "Linux" on the download page, which is kind of amazing in a way.