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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Notably, the MultiMC developer (peterix) refused to allow distribution of the launcher as a Flatpak on Linux (which is personally what I prefer for a project like this), and has been extremely touchy about distribution in non-distribution-package formats like Flatpak or AppImage

To be fair, Flatpak and AppImage are abominations to those of us who are Linux sysadmins at heart.

Why is that, btw? My biggest issue with Linux is that package manager cliques get to decide what programs I can run, which doesn't seem much better than the apple app store.

I want to be able to just Download_The_.EXE.jpg in cases where you can't trust maintainers to be supportive.

AppImages and Flatpaks can contain whatever libraries the packager wants. So, e.g. when there's a vulnerability in some library, they are not updated automatically to the new patched version when you run apt update && apt upgrade

My biggest issue with Linux is that package manager cliques get to decide what programs I can run, which doesn't seem much better than the apple app store.

That is a very bizarre objection to package managers? I'm not aware of any package manage where you can't just add another repo for it to check against. For instance, I have added several repos to my computer so I can get certain software not included in the distro's repos by default. It's as easy as adding a line to a text file.

I want to be able to just Download_The_.EXE.jpg in cases where you can't trust maintainers to be supportive.

You can always do that.. just download the .deb or .rpm or whatever format your distro uses and run dpkg -i mypackage.deb

Granted you'll have to manually resolve dependencies but it's not actually hard to do.

Guess I should clarify then: I'm a retarded techno-illiterate who's too used to being able to click a single button to install a program on windows. >_>

I didn't even realize that was an option before flatpaks. I'd just been getting everything from my distro's default repo.

Download a .deb or .rpm and click it in your file manager should even work in most cases! (although it won't auto-update) (although neither will the .exe installer unless the app itself bundles an updater)

Yes! I used the deb to put veracrypt on a live USB the other day. Really need to package my own iso at some point, or just cave and use medicat, but there's honestly much less use for live CDs these days.