dumpForBeyond

Created Tuesday 18 February 2025



BITS OF SOFTWARE

- Text editors
- Games
- Web Servers
- anything, really.

IN THE BEGINNING

When the USERS were also the ADMINS/DEVELOPERS

(Windows/Mac users, I'm guessing it felt like
"Buy the physical disc in a store"
or
"Download and hope for the best, as it litters your drive"

wand then just jumped to APP STORES?

Again, the problem:

(this is a completely made up example)

E.g. you install Libreoffice Calc (like Excel)
and also
A TI-graphing calculator app

Which both use a "lib-math.."

Again the problem

And now you delete one of them.

Or they use different versions.

How do you deal with this?

App Stores

Nice right? Curated, rated, clean set of apps

That get rid of themselves when you remove them

..theoretically

Us Linux snobs...


We saw app stores, and were like

Oh, you mean like "package managers using repositories"

wait...y'all gotta PAY for the apps lol

A related problem: Configurations

Windows: e.g. .ini files, or dropdown menus with "preferences"

Linux: Dotfiles, which can litter your home drive

Linux


Was *terrible* at first:

COMPILE THE PROGRAM YOURSELF.


OLDER Package Managers (classic)

(the precursor to app stores)
Try to track and manage libraries et al

OLDER Package Managers - Debian Family

This is Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, MX LINUX

apt/ apt-get
(synaptic, which is a gui version)
(aptitude, which is similar)

Also, the less preferred "dpkg", used to install "debs"

Fedora, Red Hat - RPM

Arch, Manjaro - pacman


MODERN ERA- DESKTOP

Linux is beginning to adopt the bifurcation
for better or for worse
of END USERS v. ADMIN/DEVELOPER

- Snap
- Flatpak
- AppImage

But all of this is mostly "apps"


WHAT ABOUT BACKEND?

BACKEND



On Direct Downloads

Theoretically very dangerous
Practically? In Linux? Probably not so much.
Especially if:

Direct Download precautions

So yes, maybe
curl http:XXX | bash
isn't so evil.

Speaking of homework, Git

Git, like Linux, is exactly what you get when a genius does his own thing;

It's great, people use it, and other parties can build on top and centralize it.

(also, it might be a *tad* depressing when you realize that there are 1000x programmers)

Github

Presently still a great resource.
Reasonably safe place to download and run code from "raw"
See also, Gitlab and other competitors.

Git

(there is a LOT more to say about git.
we spend an entire class period on it in 5367)