It is wild that people will say that using
aptto install things is too hard, but then suggest a registry edit to remove Bing from seach. Windows just isn’t as casual user friendly as it pretends to.Honestly, with Flatpak and immutable base systems this is a place Linux is really excelling now too. Being able to show a novice user a shared package manager with a search and a bunch of common apps and them actually install/remove them in a safe manner with a high likelihood they’ll work out of the box (since they come with all their deps in sync independent from distro) is kinda huge.
It’s a pretty mixed bag honestly. Sure there are some apps that we get in a mammoth poorly made appimage we’d probably have to have run in wine before or some terrifying statically compiled program embedded in a run script and that’s probably a win.
The trade-off is every developer being their own distro maintainer, 100s of gigs of duplicate dependencies, broken containers with missing libraries, leaky requirements on the underlying system, and everyone needs to be a security expert to understand all the options in flatseal to expose the right features.
Also, instead of one distro source, I’ve got at least 3 and I’ve in the last week had to install programs from multiple sources trying to get a functioning version. This feels like the norm rather than an exception.
Also this week had an app image broken by a requirement on a removed system library outside the app and a flatpak missing a key library forcing me to dig up an old .deb version. The later I lost like 6hrs on because clearly libusb was installed on the system but I didn’t realize I’d installed the flatpak and in wasn’t in the container. Such fun.
So it’s not really all sunshine and rainbows yet.
I got a free iMac recently and immediately tried to install some software on it and was told “we don’t recognize this so you can’t install it”. Like excuse me WTF?
You have to hit ctrl on the keyboard while you click to bypass it. Apple Support Article
I’m sure there are workarounds. That’s besides the point.
If they had said “we don’t recommend you install this” that would be completely fine and understandable. But that’s not what happened. I wasn’t presented with any option to bypass it. I was just told no. I shouldn’t have to Google how to do that. It’s completely absurd.
Fun fact: it also won’t let me turn off Bluetooth. How fucking batshit is that?
I so often can’t stand e.g. important privacy toggles being hidden deep in settings, dark patterns that obfuscate permitted but unprofitable behavior - so you’d think I’d be with you on this 100%.
And yet…
If they had said “we don’t recommend you install this”
, grandma would hit OK without reading it.
For every dollar someone has paid tech support to help them install a desired app from an unidentified developer, I’d bet ten dollars have been saved from others not being able to install some spyware. Maybe that murky little dialogue box is good enough for the lowest common denominators that it outweighs the annoyance for us nerds? (Our small cost being we’re required to Searx once for the solution to learn how to bypass it)
grandma would hit OK without reading it.
Then grandma would be responsible.
I don’t buy it. Because Apple has lied about this sort of thing time and time again. Giving us bullshit explanations about why they won’t let us control “our” devices. “Security”, over and over again they use this bullshit to explain away all kinds of self-serving shitfuckery. I’m certain it has far more to do with their 30% app store fees.
.
Ah I never tire of defenders of corporate shitfuckery.
Whose computer is it? Mine or Microsoft’s? Did they pay me or did I pay them? Should I also not be concerned about the regular pop-ups begging me to use it?
Did you ever stop and wonder why it is that MS so desperately wants you to use their browser?
Fuck right the fuck off, please.
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