Re: dependency hell OR it should not be this hard

[guy keren]

this is software. software has bugs.

software packaging only seems simple - but in fact is really not, 
because of the exponential amount of combinations that simply can't be 
exhaustively tested, and because it depends on code written by thousands 
of unrelated developers, that work on their own software, not on the 
"linux disribution".


so occasionally you will have problems that you'll need to fix. how 
often? it's really a matter of luck, factored by the amount of 
configuration changes you do on your system.


--guy


On 12/08/2019 9:45 AM, Jeremy Hoyland wrote:

Just to comment on your original post.
Don't think for one moment that things are any better in Windows.
The difference with APT issues is that there /is/ something you can do 
about it, and ultimately, the problem is resolvable by you.
In Windows things look a lot prettier, but I have often had an installer 
fail with no reason given and then automatically roll-back with no recourse.

The solutions there often required manual editing of the registry.
I prefer APT any day.

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 08:18, Shlomo Solomon > wrote:


Thanks for your VERY detailed reply. Some of it was "over my head", but
relevant and true - although I personally like and use KDE despite it
being quite bloated for many years now.

As an aside - I got rid of KMail, Akonadi and all their "friends" years
ago. It's hard to believe that an email program has about 80
dependencies and "suggests" another 20 packages!!!

As I wrote, I intentionally did not include too many details about the
problem since I was not really looking for a solution.

The short version - this seemed to be caused by a broken dependency and
neither apt-get or dpkg were able to solve this until I manually
deleted a few post-install scripts. So the "blame" should probably fall
on the way apt-get and dpkg handle dependencies and/or such scripts,
and not so much on the Kubuntu maintainers.

Although I did save the relevant apt and dpkg logs, I don't think
that contacting the Kubuntu maintainers will help because they will
probably "blame" the software developers who packaged the monodevelop
IDE (and provided there own PPA) - which never worked for me in the
first place so I probably should have uninstalled it months ago :-).



On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:17:39 -0400
Steve Litt mailto:sl...@troubleshooters.com>> wrote:

 > On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 09:05:24 +0300
 > Shlomo Solomon mailto:shlomo.solo...@gmail.com>> wrote:
 >
 > > Let me start by saying that I'm not looking for a solution - I
 > > solved my problem. I'm just angry and letting off some steam.
 >
 > [snip successful attempts using a ~10 step apt/dpkg witch's brew]
 >
 > I feel your pain. Probably we all do.
 >
 > And it's likely the better people to let off steam at would be:
 >
 > 1) The maintainers of your distro
 >
 > 2) The maintainers of your "Desktop Environment", if any
 >
 > 3) The authors of the software concerned
 >
 >
 > DISTRO:
 >
 > Your complaint isn't very detailed, but the fact that you needed apt
 > to fix it suggests you're using a Debian derived distro. Most Debian
 > extension distros, such as Ubuntu, Mint and Knoppix, add
 > hypercomplexity in order to make them more magically "we do it all
 > for you" and "user friendly", or just to make things look pretty.
 >
 > Debian itself, once a simplistic distro, has been slowly
complexifying
 > itself, first by defaulting to selecting of that ball of
 > confusion Gnome3, which itself has been complexifying at a remarkable
 > rate, and then by pledging allegiance to systemd: The ultimate
ball of
 > confusion.
 >
 > About the only apt packaged distro I could recommend today, from a
 > dependency-sanity point of view, would be Devuan, which rejected
 > both Gnome3 and systemd.
 >
 > I find it amusing that Debian's solution to substituting a
non-systemd
 > init system involves a many-step raindance where you pin this package
 > and hold back that package.
 >
 > Of course, Redhat and Redhat-derived distros are worse.
 >
 > Tell your distro maintainers to quit making package recommends into
 > hard requirements, and to find better solutions than secret apt
 > meetings with secret dpkg handshakes, or else consider not packaging
 > it at all. There are usually substitutes and equivalents.
 >
 >
 > DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:
 >
 > Desktop environments, which bind a window manager and a bunch of
 > applications together, including all sorts of interdependencies and
 > promiscuous communications inside and outside of dbus, were obviously
 > a bad idea from the beginning, for people who want to control their
 > computers rather than the other way around.
  

Re: dependency hell OR it should not be this hard

[Shlomo Solomon]

After more than 20 years using Linux, I have ABSOLUTELY no thoughts
about moving to Windows. My point was that a new user might be daunted
by dependency hell. Whether we like it or not, Windows is the de-facto
OS and if we want to see people moving to Linux, it's got to be better.


 

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 09:45:26 +0300
Jeremy Hoyland  wrote:

> Just to comment on your original post.
> Don't think for one moment that things are any better in Windows.
> The difference with APT issues is that there *is* something you can do
> about it, and ultimately, the problem is resolvable by you.
> In Windows things look a lot prettier, but I have often had an
> installer fail with no reason given and then automatically roll-back
> with no recourse. The solutions there often required manual editing
> of the registry. I prefer APT any day.
> 
> On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 08:18, Shlomo Solomon
>  wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for your VERY detailed reply. Some of it was "over my head",
> > but relevant and true - although I personally like and use KDE
> > despite it being quite bloated for many years now.
> >
> > As an aside - I got rid of KMail, Akonadi and all their "friends"
> > years ago. It's hard to believe that an email program has about 80
> > dependencies and "suggests" another 20 packages!!!
> >
> > As I wrote, I intentionally did not include too many details about
> > the problem since I was not really looking for a solution.
> >
> > The short version - this seemed to be caused by a broken dependency
> > and neither apt-get or dpkg were able to solve this until I manually
> > deleted a few post-install scripts. So the "blame" should probably
> > fall on the way apt-get and dpkg handle dependencies and/or such
> > scripts, and not so much on the Kubuntu maintainers.
> >
> > Although I did save the relevant apt and dpkg logs, I don't think
> > that contacting the Kubuntu maintainers will help because they will
> > probably "blame" the software developers who packaged the
> > monodevelop IDE (and provided there own PPA) - which never worked
> > for me in the first place so I probably should have uninstalled it
> > months ago :-).
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:17:39 -0400
> > Steve Litt  wrote:
> >
> > > On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 09:05:24 +0300
> > > Shlomo Solomon  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Let me start by saying that I'm not looking for a solution - I
> > > > solved my problem. I'm just angry and letting off some steam.
> > >
> > > [snip successful attempts using a ~10 step apt/dpkg witch's brew]
> > >
> > > I feel your pain. Probably we all do.
> > >
> > > And it's likely the better people to let off steam at would be:
> > >
> > > 1) The maintainers of your distro
> > >
> > > 2) The maintainers of your "Desktop Environment", if any
> > >
> > > 3) The authors of the software concerned
> > >
> > >
> > > DISTRO:
> > >
> > > Your complaint isn't very detailed, but the fact that you needed
> > > apt to fix it suggests you're using a Debian derived distro. Most
> > > Debian extension distros, such as Ubuntu, Mint and Knoppix, add
> > > hypercomplexity in order to make them more magically "we do it all
> > > for you" and "user friendly", or just to make things look pretty.
> > >
> > > Debian itself, once a simplistic distro, has been slowly
> > > complexifying itself, first by defaulting to selecting of that
> > > ball of confusion Gnome3, which itself has been complexifying at
> > > a remarkable rate, and then by pledging allegiance to systemd:
> > > The ultimate ball of confusion.
> > >
> > > About the only apt packaged distro I could recommend today, from a
> > > dependency-sanity point of view, would be Devuan, which rejected
> > > both Gnome3 and systemd.
> > >
> > > I find it amusing that Debian's solution to substituting a
> > > non-systemd init system involves a many-step raindance where you
> > > pin this package and hold back that package.
> > >
> > > Of course, Redhat and Redhat-derived distros are worse.
> > >
> > > Tell your distro maintainers to quit making package recommends
> > > into hard requirements, and to find better solutions than secret
> > > apt meetings with secret dpkg handshakes, or else consider not
> > > packaging it at all. There are usually substitutes and
> > > equivalents.
> > >
> > >
> > > DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:
> > >
> > > Desktop environments, which bind a window manager and a bunch of
> > > applications together, including all sorts of interdependencies
> > > and promiscuous communications inside and outside of dbus, were
> > > obviously a bad idea from the beginning, for people who want to
> > > control their computers rather than the other way around.
> > >
> > > If you use a desktop environment, write to them and tell them to
> > > reduce promiscuous communication and dependencies. They'll laugh
> > > at you, of course: Their purpose on this earth is to create
> > > obscenely interdependent black boxes.
> > >
> > > You can avoid a lot of this by going back to a window manager and
> > > 

Re: dependency hell OR it should not be this hard

[Jeremy Hoyland]

Just to comment on your original post.
Don't think for one moment that things are any better in Windows.
The difference with APT issues is that there *is* something you can do
about it, and ultimately, the problem is resolvable by you.
In Windows things look a lot prettier, but I have often had an installer
fail with no reason given and then automatically roll-back with no recourse.
The solutions there often required manual editing of the registry.
I prefer APT any day.

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 at 08:18, Shlomo Solomon 
wrote:

> Thanks for your VERY detailed reply. Some of it was "over my head", but
> relevant and true - although I personally like and use KDE despite it
> being quite bloated for many years now.
>
> As an aside - I got rid of KMail, Akonadi and all their "friends" years
> ago. It's hard to believe that an email program has about 80
> dependencies and "suggests" another 20 packages!!!
>
> As I wrote, I intentionally did not include too many details about the
> problem since I was not really looking for a solution.
>
> The short version - this seemed to be caused by a broken dependency and
> neither apt-get or dpkg were able to solve this until I manually
> deleted a few post-install scripts. So the "blame" should probably fall
> on the way apt-get and dpkg handle dependencies and/or such scripts,
> and not so much on the Kubuntu maintainers.
>
> Although I did save the relevant apt and dpkg logs, I don't think
> that contacting the Kubuntu maintainers will help because they will
> probably "blame" the software developers who packaged the monodevelop
> IDE (and provided there own PPA) - which never worked for me in the
> first place so I probably should have uninstalled it months ago :-).
>
>
>
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:17:39 -0400
> Steve Litt  wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 09:05:24 +0300
> > Shlomo Solomon  wrote:
> >
> > > Let me start by saying that I'm not looking for a solution - I
> > > solved my problem. I'm just angry and letting off some steam.
> >
> > [snip successful attempts using a ~10 step apt/dpkg witch's brew]
> >
> > I feel your pain. Probably we all do.
> >
> > And it's likely the better people to let off steam at would be:
> >
> > 1) The maintainers of your distro
> >
> > 2) The maintainers of your "Desktop Environment", if any
> >
> > 3) The authors of the software concerned
> >
> >
> > DISTRO:
> >
> > Your complaint isn't very detailed, but the fact that you needed apt
> > to fix it suggests you're using a Debian derived distro. Most Debian
> > extension distros, such as Ubuntu, Mint and Knoppix, add
> > hypercomplexity in order to make them more magically "we do it all
> > for you" and "user friendly", or just to make things look pretty.
> >
> > Debian itself, once a simplistic distro, has been slowly complexifying
> > itself, first by defaulting to selecting of that ball of
> > confusion Gnome3, which itself has been complexifying at a remarkable
> > rate, and then by pledging allegiance to systemd: The ultimate ball of
> > confusion.
> >
> > About the only apt packaged distro I could recommend today, from a
> > dependency-sanity point of view, would be Devuan, which rejected
> > both Gnome3 and systemd.
> >
> > I find it amusing that Debian's solution to substituting a non-systemd
> > init system involves a many-step raindance where you pin this package
> > and hold back that package.
> >
> > Of course, Redhat and Redhat-derived distros are worse.
> >
> > Tell your distro maintainers to quit making package recommends into
> > hard requirements, and to find better solutions than secret apt
> > meetings with secret dpkg handshakes, or else consider not packaging
> > it at all. There are usually substitutes and equivalents.
> >
> >
> > DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:
> >
> > Desktop environments, which bind a window manager and a bunch of
> > applications together, including all sorts of interdependencies and
> > promiscuous communications inside and outside of dbus, were obviously
> > a bad idea from the beginning, for people who want to control their
> > computers rather than the other way around.
> >
> > If you use a desktop environment, write to them and tell them to
> > reduce promiscuous communication and dependencies. They'll laugh at
> > you, of course: Their purpose on this earth is to create obscenely
> > interdependent black boxes.
> >
> > You can avoid a lot of this by going back to a window manager and
> > selecting your applications a-la-carte, trying mightily not to include
> > desktop environment apps. If enough people were to do this (not very
> > likely, most people are wedded to their "we do it all for you"
> > environments), the "desktop environments" might catch on and put more
> > of a priority on modularity and thin interfaces (or no interfaces
> > where not needed).
> >
> > I kicked KDE and every KDE app and library off my computer in
> > 2012-2013, and lived to tell about it. I've never used Gnome3, and
> > slowly but surely I've been kicking its apps and