Comment by curt15
1 month ago
Where do you draw the line between system packages and user facing apps? Some software defies such an easy categorization. If your default install doesn't come with docker and you install docker later for development, does that make docker a user-facing app? What about language toolchains like golang, rust, npm, etc?
> Where do you draw the line between system packages and user facing apps?
If it works in Homebrew, I almost always pick Homebrew. :) I have a pretty good feeling for what works since for the past few years I've mostly used an atomic distro (Aurora, based on Universal Blue, based on Fedora). It just comes naturally for me on Fedora too.
I've found that this way you can get many of the stability pros of using an atomic distro even on a non-atomic one.
> I've found that this way you can get many of the stability pros of using an atomic distro even on a non-atomic one.
Digression, but I’m curious since you brought it up: Are you saying that Silverblue-based distros are noticeably more stable than Fedora? Or is it more a theoretical benefit, that you believe more in the long-term stability of that architecture?
> Are you saying that Silverblue-based distros are noticeably more stable than Fedora?
TBH, I can only say it's far more stable than openSUSE, Ubuntu and Manjaro which are the non-atomic distros I've used for a long time.
Aurora has never broken and I've never had any major problems that I can recall in over two years. I never initiate updates of the system, my Flatpaks or Homebrew. That happens in the background and whenever i restart (without me noticing).
It's Linux for those who have work to do and don't want to be a sysadmin for their desktop.
3 replies →
It's an interesting question on Linux. On macOS entire toolchains would be fair game. I just ran `brew install colima`, `brew install llvm`, etc.
But clearly anything that would conflict with distro-specific opinionated decisions is out. Or DE-specific opinionated decisions. Maybe a good rule is "anything that would be useful simutaneously on all *nix".
I use `lima` and `llvm` every day with brew. It works great there's no reason to use distro specific tooling when you can use what everyone else is using.
"Conflict" is maybe a strong word? Homebrew installs stuff into its own directory tree so it should in theory not have issues coexisting with native packages.