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

Mon Jul 11 10:12:25 PDT 2022

> 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

Yup, an excellent topic for the meeting.

And by the way, are you aware of the #nblug IRC channel?  It's usually
at least a little bit busier than the talk list.  Not to discourage
anyone from using the talk list, but... well, not many people seem to
post here.

- Derek

On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 04:28:14 -0700, Brad Morrison
<bradmorrison at sonic.net> wrote:

> 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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> >
> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >     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  
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Subject: Digest Footer
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> > ------------------------------
> >
> > End of talk Digest, Vol 199, Issue 4
> > ************************************
> >  