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Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

My Linux experience so far has been limited to ls, cd and vi. From the outside, package management has always seemed to me like a huge mess. But, I've been starting to learn Nix recently and I really like it. I can add, remove, test, screw up, change my mind, whatever without stress.

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"From the outside, package management has always seemed to me like a huge mess."

Compared to what?! There's no OS that has historically had better (or even close to as good) package management as Linux, either in the form of apt-get/dpkg or yum/RPM. Nix is probably better, on a couple of dimensions, but to suggest it was a mess before...well, I just wonder what you could be comparing to that would be better?

Perhaps it's about expecting to have program locality?

I.e. you download a zip file, you unpack it into a directory, and here is your entire program. Right there, in that directory, not splattered around the filesystem by the package manager.

That's the way it's done on Windows, anyway.

Perhaps for the newer Windows platforms (e.g. UWP) but Win32 installers have definitely been known to put things all over your system.

Yeah, that's the reason why i have a "got installer? not worth using" pre-filter for Windows software.

Not sure how things are these days, but i'm talking about the Win 9x to Win 7 days.

But that is not a packaging system. You can put binaries in zip files in Linux systems too.

And I don't understand what kind of software you used with that pre-filter. You cannot even install drivers then.

"Pre filter" is kind of like a rule of thumb. There are exceptions for stuff like drivers and for big corporate programs that just don't come in other ways.

But a lot of smaller programs are available in the zip form, or have alternatives that are.

In short, i prefer portable programs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_application

I'd have opposite filter. Did you correct permissions for folder where you unzipped/placed executables so that it couldn't overwrite itself? Correctly installed software in program files folder would be protected from being overwritten without administrator privileges.

No, Windows has %ProgramFiles%, %CommonProgramFiles% and the registry as officially supported places to put application data.

Huh. I didn't even consider that. I guess it's been a very long time since I've used systems where that was a thing that happened (and Windows isn't such a system, realistically speaking; Program Files, registry, etc.). But, I do remember coming from Amiga back in 1995, or so, and thinking UNIX/Linux was crazy with things spread all over the place. Amiga did work that way, generally speaking (though it looked a little UNIX-y at the system layer, too). How was I supposed to find anything?

But, the package manager knows where everything is so I don't have to (and there's consistency across systems...system python/perl/ruby/bash is always in /usr/bin).

If that's why "it's a mess", then I have to argue that it only looks like a mess, until you get to know it a little better. Package management is the single biggest reason I have never been able to seriously use any other desktop OS over the past 20 years, or so (I have a Windows partition for games and audio, and I've had a Hackintosh a couple of times for tinkering with iOS dev, but Linux is where I get work done).

Last time I used Windows very little would work unless it was a) installed and b) installed to "C:\Program Files" (some software, can't remember which, would let you choose a different location, but wouldn't work).

It crushed my dreams of a small Windows partition + a large data/programs partition :(

Perhaps https://ninite.com/ ?? :)

It doesn't need to be compared to anything to be called a mess. dpkg/rpm have been widely useful, but package and dependency management is still a PITA.

Um, IPS, BSD ports and pkgsrc are a thing.

IPS and ports, really?

pkgsrc isn't bad at all, but definitely not better than yum or apt. One might prefer pkgsrc, but one couldn't reasonably say yum or apt are a "mess" compared to pkgsrc.

As a huge Nix fan, I think it's perfectly acceptable to say non-linux package management is an abomination, linux package management is a mess, and nix is not (yet :)) ideal.

Engineers shouldn't assume something is done well because nobody is doing any better. Some things suck and there's nothing to blame but other priorities or sheer laziness.

"I can add, remove, test, screw up, change my mind, whatever without stress"

I love Nix and completely agree with that, and I do have lots of experience with several package managers (deb, rpm, rubygems, ...)

In my opinion, everyone should learn the basics of package management, and be able to get a full stack operational. Valuable, especially if you're doing side projects.

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