Re:Rant: Year of Linux on the Desktop (2022)
by smoldesu on Sunday January 01, 2023 @11:22AM
(#34207608)
It's an unfortunate side-effect of unreliable packaging systems like pacman. Systems like Fedora Silverblue and NixOS offer fascinating (if incomplete) glimpses into how this can be fixed, though:
- Fedora Silverblue wants to reduce software reliance on the OS as a runtime. Relying on Flatpaks allows you to freeze most dependencies in-place and have a fully reproducible (if a bit redundant) runtime environment.
- NixOS wants to eliminate software reliance on the OS by removing the OS altogether. A default NixOS install only has a symlink to sh in the /bin folder, everything else needs to be dynamically loaded by the package manager through the Nix Store (big nuclear soup folder with hashed/labelled package tarballs).
Both OSes have some rough edges that make them hard to recommend, but it does suggest a silver lining for Linux packaging in the future. It's definitely a problem, just more of a distro-specific one rather than a Linux-specific one.
- Fedora Silverblue wants to reduce software reliance on the OS as a runtime. Relying on Flatpaks allows you to freeze most dependencies in-place and have a fully reproducible (if a bit redundant) runtime environment.
- NixOS wants to eliminate software reliance on the OS by removing the OS altogether. A default NixOS install only has a symlink to sh in the /bin folder, everything else needs to be dynamically loaded by the package manager through the Nix Store (big nuclear soup folder with hashed/labelled package tarballs).
Both OSes have some rough edges that make them hard to recommend, but it does suggest a silver lining for Linux packaging in the future. It's definitely a problem, just more of a distro-specific one rather than a Linux-specific one.