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Comment by kitsunesoba | Hacker News Reader

I’ve always thought it strange that most Linux distributions and other *nixes don’t put up barriers between not only system and userland, but also between “essential” userland (i.e. DEs) and other user-installed packages. The lack of separation seems like a setup for failure and complicates package manager design considerably.

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This is where the excitements of using linux for day to day tasks come from, right? Install Steam and suddenly your DE got uninstalled [1], for example.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments/qhjhf2/linus_tr...

But it really isn't. I never have problems in linux with python apps that are prepackaged by the distro. It's up to you to keep that separate if you install your own apps that require python. You really can't blame it on distro maintainers as they are really doing just fine with it. What happens is people won't take the time to understand what they're running instead of randomly typing a CLI or clicking on the app icon. Linux doesn't hold your hand (and really it can't! there are simply too many possible combinations) unless you use what comes with the distro.

> unless you use what comes with the distro.

And, even then, it's not the best choice for users that need hand-holding.

Can you come up with a solid definition to separate "essential" userland from other user-installed packages?

You cite DEs as essential, but maybe I want to be using my own Enlightenment install rather than whatever the system has installed (true story!)

Well I mean, there’s no reason why the user shouldn’t be able to control what’s installed as essential userland. It just needs to be managed entirely separately from the system and “normal” userland. It could be as simple as a flag on apt, dnf, etc.

This is the reason I really, really love Nix. I have been fighting this same battle for years and Nix finally fixed it.

I'd define it as "never have zero packages that provide a DE". This could be a global setting in the package manager which you would be able to set to `false` if so desired.

You can always build escape hatches for that kind of use case. Some more stringent separation between essential and installed components could have prevented Linus removing his DE.

What's a DE?

Short for Desktop Environment. You can choose yours in Linux.

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