this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Linux
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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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A bit of history. The first universal packaging format was snap by Canonical and used to be called Click apps and it was made for the Ubuntu mobile OS and later to the Ubuntu desktop. Red Hat in response to that created the FlatPak format. The AppImages are community effort.
Remember Unity?
I wish I didn't. 🤮
I liked Unity - they were doing so much customization to Gnome that it made sense for them to have their own DE.
But it's dead again...
This is something I like about Debian... They don't make changes unless it's really necessary. I run it on all my servers, except an Unraid server. Network config is still in
/etc/network/interfacesin the same format it was in 20 years ago. When they adopted systemd, they still had full backwards compatibility with SysV init, and even today I think you can still uninstall systemd. It just keeps working.Yeah, the worst implementation of it I had to deal with was a CentOS 6 system.
The best implementation I've used is probably my Chromebook.
AppImages long predate Snaps, but yes, Snaps do predate Flatpaks by a few months. There's also Nix packages, which predate all three. Of course, this all matters very little compared to the merits of all four technologies. The heavy dependence on proprietary technology for repositories makes Snap clearly unsuitable to become the universal Linux package format.
I don't think that matters at this point. Flatpak is widespread and Canonical can't possibly expect the linux crowd to choose the proprietary alternative. I could see snap being the one, had they just handled it differently.