I believe most projects that serve debs from their own download page do not try to package for each distro separately, and instead opt to package up requirements as needed.

I can't comment deeply on deb vs rpm, it is kinda disappointing that we have this split, and I don't know if there's a great way to merge it back.

Mac does have a good distribution story. This also exists on Linux in the form of app images. The one missing piece is that Mac has the Applications convention. AppImageLauncher[0] solves this, but really it would be good for Gnome/KDE to just integrate this concept. That gives the (important!) "have the application show up in the application launcher" option.

I do not believe one could qualify Windows programs as being distributed as a single binary. A single installer, perhaps! But many Windows programs dump files all over your file tree to do things, and then goes to touch stuff in your registry. There's a reason we have "portable executables" for windows as its own download option!

[0]: https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher

Who are you blaming, exactly? There’s no project or organization called “Linux as a whole”.

That's exactly what the problem is. The diffusion of responsibility makes it a decades-long problem and nobody has the responsibility or the power to fix it.

OK, so, why bother complaining about it? Use Linux if it does what you want, otherwise use macOS or Windows.

Because I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want:

* A desktop package that isn’t a vehicle for ads (like Windows and ChromeOS).

* A desktop package that doesn’t require you to write your own one-off scripts to work around stupid deficiencies (like GNU/Linux).

* A desktop package that doesn’t constantly throw away all its “legacy” and break a bunch of stuff (like Mac).

It’s indeed not unreasonable to want that, but there does not exist any incentive structure that would cause it to exist. It’s not the fault of some person or group of people doing something wrong; it’s simply a logical consequence of what Linux is.

A problem can’t be blamed on a single entity is still a problem, right? I think OP was just explaining the issue.

I’d be perfectly fine with everyone switching over to .deb files. Sadly it seems AppImage is more popular these days.

Sure, I’d be fine with any standard. It’s just insane how just about every distro has its own sporadically updated repo instead of sharing common packages. Projects that need to be patched and rebuilt should be the exception, not the rule.

Scroll down and you’ll see people arguing about supported features because they’re running an ancient version of Thunderbird supplied by their distro.

From what I've seen, .deb is still king over rpm, appimage, flatpak and snap.

> On other platforms (Windows, macOS, Android, iOS) it’s fairly common to distribute GUI apps as a single binary so you don’t need an army of package maintainers.

You can do this on Linux, too, be it by compiling a static binary or bundling everything as an AppImage or what have you.

So why isn't it do more widely when it would convenience many users?

Frankly, I find it annoying that it isn't done as a matter of course.

I agree. Thankfully, enough others agree that there are AppImages and other single-file executables for all sorts of Linux software.

'Linux as a whole' has nothing to do with .deb files.

That’s kinda my point.

Sorry yes I overreacted to the first sentence without understanding the tone.

I think it's unfortunate anyone offers .deb (or similar) downloads really - the many Linux distros don't have a single packaging mechanism, so why pretend they do, or that your app's not going to work on the ones you don't provide?

Just say it's built for Linux, perhaps here's a binary, here's the source if available, this is the preferred name, go and check your package manager.