[NBLUG/talk] talk Digest, Vol 199, Issue 4

Mon Jul 11 04:28:14 PDT 2022

Thanks for the explanation of my options Derek! I do tend to like to use 
the latest software/package versions, but I have heard enough other 
people at NBLUG complain about what they felt were useless changes to 
the user interface of certain packages/apps that they use to know that 
many people do not update as frequently as I like to do.

I use Linux Mint partly because it is ranked on DistroWatch as the third 
most popular Linux distro 
(https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint), so I assumed that 
more users translates to more frequent updates. LM does appear to use a 
fixed release model instead of rolling. I haven't really thought about 
it before, but it looks like Linux Mint is a Ubuntu based distro 
(whatever that means), but uses Debian for its package management - ? Do 
the distros usually package the apps themselves or does Ubuntu/Debian do 
that?

We can talk about this more at the NBLUG meeting on Tuesday, but I am 
curious what Linux distros other members use and why they prefer _____.

Brad

On 7/6/22 12:00, talk-request at nblug.org wrote:
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>     1. Re: preferences on software package versions, thoughts on
>        Snap/Flatpak/Appimage (Derek B. Noonburg)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2022 15:00:12 -0700
> From: "Derek B. Noonburg"<derekn at foolabs.com>
> To:talk at nblug.org
> Subject: Re: [NBLUG/talk] preferences on software package versions,
> 	thoughts on Snap/Flatpak/Appimage
> Message-ID: <20220705150012.0db9bc45 at numbat>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> If you want the latest versions of applications, your choices come down
> to:
>
> (1) Run a Linux distribution that updates things often, which probably
> means a rolling release distro.  Oh, and you also need to make sure
> that the distro packages the particular apps you want.
>
> (2) Run binaries built by the application developers.  Lately those
> have been moving toward flatpak/appimage/snap/whatever.  I haven't
> personally played with any of those formats, but they feel pretty
> kludgey to me -- "All these Linux distros have different library
> versions...  I know, we'll package up all of the libraries (almost a
> mini Linux distro) with our app."  I guess that approach does "fix" the
> problem, but ick.
>
> This also has the downside of requiring you to make sure the apps get
> updated -- as you pointed out.
>
> (3) Build the applications yourself from source.  This avoids library
> version problems, but obviously requires some extra work.  Maybe worth
> it if you have a small number of applications that you really care
> about keeping current, maybe not.
>
> Also, some applications are pretty easy to build from source, and some
> are a major pain in the butt.  It's kind of hard to tell until you
> actually try to build them.
>
> This has the same update problem as option 2.
>
> It would be nice if the Linux folks could settle on a single desktop
> distribution, so that application developers could simply package for
> that distro.  But:https://xkcd.com/927/
>
> Given all of that, do you really need the absolute latest versions of
> those applications?  For system libraries and common attack targets (web
> browsers), you clearly want to apply security updates promptly.
> Centralized system updates are great for that.  For other things... how
> many security updates (as opposed to bug fix and feature updates) does
> FreeCAD (for example) receive?
>
> If you really do want the updates -- maybe you ran into a bug in
> FreeCAD that's been fixed, maybe Mint has a particularly old version,
> or whatever -- if there are only a couple applications like that, then
> maybe it's worth considering option 2 (or 3) for just those
> applications.
>
> - Derek
>
>
> On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:50:04 -0700
> Brad Morrison<bradmorrison at sonic.net>  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> As I'm fairly new to Linux, I'm sure that there are reasons for why
>> the software packages in the Ubuntu repositories are often not the
>> latest versions available via the various projects' websites. I tend
>> to prefer to not use Flakpak/Flathub, after reading a blog post from
>> Clem, the project lead of Linux Mint (which is the distro I use)
>> about his concerns about Snap (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906).
>> But I have noticed that for both FreeCAD and gnuCash, the Flatpak
>> versions are considerably more recent/updated than the "Ubuntu"
>> version (is that what you call it?) also available in the Linux Mint
>> software manager.
>>
>> FreeCAD: 18.4 for the Ubuntu version v. 19.4 for the Flathub version
>> -https://www.freecadweb.org/
>>
>> gnuCash: 3.8b for the Ubuntu version v. 4.10+ for the Flathub version
>> -https://www.gnucash.org/
>> <https://www.gnucash.org/>
>>
>> I could also download the appimage from the FreeCAD website, but I
>> like centrally managed updates.
>>
>> Does anyone else have any thoughts to share on this? Preferences?
>>
>> And I've also wondered how the desktop version of Signal is set up so
>> that the package is installed via the Linux Mint software manager,
>> but the updates come via the web (from Signal). Is that another
>> approach to similar issues?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Brad
>
>
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> End of talk Digest, Vol 199, Issue 4
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