Comment by forrestthewoods
11 hours ago
It’s a bloody shame that Linux is incapable of reliable running software programs without layers and layers of disparate, competing abstractions.
I’m increasingly convinced that the mere existence of a package manager (for programs, not source code) is a sign of a failed platform design. The fact that it exists at all is a miserable nightmare.
Flatpak and Snap tried to make this better. But they do too much which just introduced new problems.
Steam does not have this problem. Download game, play game. Software is not that complicated.
> Steam does not have this problem. Download game, play game. Software is not that complicated.
Steam on Linux essentially has its own "package manager" which uses containerized runtimes: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools
The Steam Linux Runtime is pretty bare bones. Their most recent runtime hasn’t been updated in 4 years. That’s quite different.
> Their most recent runtime hasn’t been updated in 4 years. That’s quite different.
Bad, even.
8 replies →
> I’m increasingly convinced that the mere existence of a package manager (for programs, not source code) is a sign of a failed platform design.
Nix is a build system for source code, similar to make. It is such a robust build system that it also can be used as a package manager with a binary cache
Does Steam let you control the whole dependency tree of your software, including modifying any part of it and rebuilding from source as necessary, or pushing it to a whole other machine?
Real life software is much more than just downloading a game and running it.
> Real life software is much more than just downloading a game and running it.
Real life software outside of Linux is pretty much just downloading and running it. Only in Linux we don't have a single stable OS ABI, forcing us to find the correct package for our specific distro, or to package the software ourselves.
Pushing to another machine? Yes. By strict definition. Steam exists to sell pre-compiled proprietary programs for dollars.
Rebuilding? No. Linux package management is so-so at allowing you to compile programs. But they’re dogshit garbage at helping you reliably run that program. Docker exists because Linux can’t run software.