this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This article reminded me of how I haven't run in a single dependency version conflict for years, I'm starting to get what debian users feel like seeing all this new distros fixing problems they never had in the first place
You can thank Flatpak for that. Dependency hell is real, especially on Debian, which ships old libraries. If you stick to default repos, you're unlikely to directly run into dependency issues, but once you install a program manually or from another repo, it's another story.
One example you may not have noticed, but which is a direct consequence of dependency hell, and a serious security issue, is for Firefox on Debian 11: it took around 6 months after it was EOL for Debian to update Firefox ESR. Twice (in other words, every single Firefox update on Debian 11).
There were similar issues for Chromium.
Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Web-Browser-Packages-Debian (same thing happened the year after, at least for Firefox, I don't know about Chromium).
It's almost like patience has its benefits, even if it means being forever behind the proverbial Joneses.
I tried using Arch for a year+, and spent too much time finding ways to fix things that broke with each update. Or fixing Pacman errors that made every package fail. Or filtering the update list to prevent breaking things. Or fixing the errors that using the AUR had introduced to Pacman.
On my debian PCs, I haven't even had to deal with version upgrades breaking them. I'm definitely missing out on the latest and greatest for most software I run, but I much prefer the peace of mind not worrying about updates breaking anything. I'd probably be a more powerful user if I had taken the time to learn exactly how to balance everything in Arch, but sometimes I just want to spin everything up, patch any major flaws or issues, and then get on with doing what I set out to do. An OS should be transparent when you need it to be.