What killed the linux desktop: package managers
Underpinning a lot of problems with linux was always package managers. Device drivers too. But the primary way to get software onto your system is through a package manager. Which is a fancy zip file with some scripts in it for particular events during installation. This is what killed off linux as a desktop.
Why is it that on debian the packages all depend on different packages? Why is it that files are installed into different places? Or that the filesystem has a dozen different configuration formats, all of which are nonsensical and pointless. It's just a massive pile of ego-masturbation and package managers are at the centre of that whole dogpile.
Whats the real difference between an RPM, or a DEB file? There isn't none. Any different is artificial. So if you wanna support linux, why can't I just use one format and have one configuration system with multiple potential backends to store the actual config in any number of ways. But that said, why aren't configuration files json documents? Can you give me any technical reason why any format couldn't just be a standard, well described, well supported json format which is machine processable and human readable/editable? It would be lightyears ahead of the trash garbage which is installed into /etc right now with about ten different file formats and no consistent way to know which is which or machine scriptable way to interact with any of it.
Expanding this point about consistency, what about configuration? Why can't I reliably get the ip address of my machine using a command instead of using sed, awk, and grep on the output from ifconfig, or is it ipconfig? or ip? or whatever tool it is today?
I know I'm expanding my point a little bit here. But underpinning this entire message is the core theme. The basic standards of software installation and system configuration should have been standardised and resolved DECADES AGO. It's absolutely ridiculous that we have a dozen package managers installation files into a dozen different locations based on whatever distro decided to buck the trend and go it's own way. Why are they doing these random and pointless changes to how the /etc filesystem is stored? It's just ego, it's just empire building. We need to acknowledge that fact and then we might have a chance to fix it.
But no doubt there are a dozen people gonna try to debunk my point by whatabout-isming it into oblivion and then nothing will get done cause nobody wants to accept this is a big problem that needs to be fixed.
Last time I tried to make this point I got a bunch of comments about how this wasn't the biggest problem and then blah blah blah. Can we all just agree that whatever you're going to add to this message, is in fact another problem on top of my problem, instead of trying to debunk what I'm saying by just layering on another totally different thing? Would be nice right? To finally agree on something. We can both be right you know, it's not an either/or issue.
Linux failed cause nobody was professional enough to do the right thing and instead we have a bunch of professional amateurs building distributions that now is an unfixable problem because those people are "validated" by their long tenures instead of being ridiculed for producing inconsistent piles of garbage all in the sake of brushing their own ego instead of doing the right thing.
That's the underpinning problem of linux and unfortunately it's a problem that will never be solved.