That’s clearly bullshit because
if the user sets a system wide theme and your appLICATION follows that theme, then your appLICATION is not going to be any harder to use than the system itself nor any other appLICATION using native widgets.
What is actually happening is designers are forcing non-native controls, in part because web technologies have infested every corner of software development these days. Unsurprisingly, those non-native widgets break in a plethora of ways when the system diverges even marginally from the OS defaults.
And instead of those designers admitting that they fucked up, they instead double down on their contempt for their users.
Also, can we please not call desktop applications “apps” in response to an article about an OS that predates smartphones by several decades.
Odds are, you’re not going to get any contributions even if you do want them. So they could just upload regardless.
And if the README explicitly says the project isn’t open to contributors nor feature requests, then you’re even less likely to see that (and have a very valid reason to politely close any issues on the unlikely scenario that someone might create one).
The vast majority of stuff on GitHub goes unnoticed by the vast majority of people. And only a very small minority of people ever interact with the few projects they do pull from GH.
> Odds are, you’re not going to get any contributions even if you do want them. So they could just upload regardless.
This is not my personal experience nor the experience of a number of folks that I know personally. I think it's pretty hard to generalize about this.
> The vast majority of stuff on GitHub goes unnoticed by the vast majority of people. And only a very small minority of people ever interact with the few projects they do pull from GH.
So what? It's probably not going to impact you, so it's okay and we just have to deal with it? I reject that logic entirely.
> This is not my personal experience nor the experience of a number of folks that I know personally. I think it's pretty hard to generalize about this.
I think it’s pretty easy to generalise because public repositories are public, so the data is available.
The vast majority of repositories on GH has between 0 and 10 stars and no issues raised by other people.
Even people (like myself) who have repos with thousands of stars and other GH members “following” them, will have other repos with in GH with zero interaction.
> So what? It's probably not going to impact you, so it's okay and we just have to deal with it? I reject that logic entirely.
That’s a really uncharitable interpretation of my comment.
A more charitable way of reading it would be:
“Worrying about a minor problem that is easily remediated and likely wouldn’t happen anyway isn’t a strong reason to miss out.”
If we were talking about something high stakes, where one’s career, family or life would be affected; then I’d understand. But the worst outcome here is an assumption gets proven true and they delete the repo.
Please don’t take this as a persuasive argument that someone should do something they don’t want to do. If people don’t want to share their code then that’s their choice.
Instead this is responding to the comment that your friend DID want to share but was scared of a theoretical but low risk and unlikely scenario. That nervousness isn’t irrational, but it’s also not a good reason by itself to miss out on doing something you said they did want to do.
If however, that was really just an excuse and they actually had no real desire to share their code, then they should just be honest and say that. There’s no obligation that people need to open source their pet projects so they don’t need to justify it with arguments about GHs lack controls. They can just said “I don’t want my code public” and that’s a good enough reason itself.
I wonder if the unspoken “paradigm” shift is the distribution was vibe coded.
There’s a lot of contradictions on the landing page that would easily be explained by either kids writing it, or someone vibecoding the site.
Such as their claim that updates are a “single iso”, and also their claim about a single App Store, and they then go on to discuss flatpak and homebrew package management.
Or their claim to have redesigned the desktop from the ground up, while boasting they run KDE/Plasma.
And there’s also the claims that it brings something totally new while then going on to describe core Linux features.
Also the scripts running “non intrusively” yet that’s just what you’d expect any seasoned admin to do. This isn’t a headline feature unless you’re new to the game.
Good luck to the guys. I hope they enjoy the exercise. But this is definitely a hobby project cosplaying as a serious distro
I'm not sure where some of these "contradictions" come from, as I e.g. can't find anything about them having "redesigned the desktop" on the page with those keywords. But for the rest, I don't see how they are contradictory - at least if you've spent a few seconds to understand them.
> Such as their claim that updates are a “single iso”
Updates literally are a "single image" (didn't see "iso" mentioned). Where is the contradiction?
> and also their claim about a single App Store, and they then go on to discuss flatpak and homebrew package management.
There literally is a single app store. Homebrew is not used to install apps, only for CLI tools. Flatpak is the single app store which users use to install apps (through Bazaar). Where is the contradiction?
> And there’s also the claims that it brings something totally new while then going on to describe core Linux features.
Can you explain what exactly you're referring to?
> Also the scripts running “non intrusively” yet that’s just what you’d expect any seasoned admin to do. This isn’t a headline feature unless you’re new to the game.
This distribution isn't targeted at "seasoned admins", so why wouldn't they mention something relevant to their target group? No contradiction here.
Yeah I was typing from memory on phone. So the citations aren’t going to be verbatim.
> Updates literally are a "single image" (didn't see "iso" mentioned). Where is the contradiction?
Because that’s not how homebrew works. And you can’t have a single image if you’re expecting people to install apps via their multiple different endorsed delivery mechanisms.
> There literally is a single app store. Homebrew is not used to install apps, only for CLI tools. Flatpak is the single app store which users use to install apps (through Bazaar). Where is the contradiction?
Because an App Store is ostensibly just a package manager. I get they’re making a distinction between desktop apps and CLI (homebrew does GUI apps too by the way), but when their emphasis is on “easy” and “one way to do things”, having two different ways to install apps contradicts their mission statement.
If they actually cared about this mission statement AND had half the competence they claim, they’d build a unified UI that supports all use cases rather than expect people to learn those different tools and why it matters that they’re different.
> Can you explain what exactly you're referring to?
“Aurora is a paradigm shift for Linux.
To rethink the Linux Desktop experience from the ground up, we built Aurora on new technology and principles.”
Bazaar, Plasma, homebrew, etc. none of this is unique to Thor distribution.
They also boast about being able to rollback updates. That isn’t new to Linux either. Though I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’ve created a smoother default experience here.
> This distribution isn't targeted at "seasoned admins", so why wouldn't they mention something relevant to their target group? No contradiction here.
i didn’t say thy are targeting seasoned admins. I said seasoned admins would take for granted that’s how you’d write that code. So wouldn’t even consider it something to announce.
The only reason you’d announce it would be because you hadn’t worked in this space before and feel a sense of achievement doing the bloody obvious. (And to be clear, I have zero issue with people having projects like these to learn new skills)
Also, I clearly didn’t say “literally everything was a contradiction.”
I am interested who you think this is targeting. Because they do specifically say this is for developers (amongst other people). And the reason they give (VSCode) is a pretty noob argument. If you can’t figure out how to install an IDE then you’re clearly tech savvy enough to be a developer.
the updates being a single image has nothing to do with homebrew. The OS is a single image that gets updated, that 100% the same that every user will get daily or weekly (depending on what branch/stream you are on).
I get that. But my point is if you’ve got 100+ bits of software installed via homebrew and flatpak, then it’s a bit of a stretch to say updates are a single image.
I’m sure there is a reason for their design but the messaging is all over the place. They boast about things that you should expect to happen (like testing packages before releasing - even bleeding edge distros do this) and throw superlatives around with little substance to back them up while quoting pretty run-of-the-mill choices like KDE and VSCode. It leaves an overall impression that the people behind it can’t be taken to seriously.
If that’s unfair then I’m sorry. But it’s their job to convince me that I should trust them with something as important as an OS. It’s not my job to give them the benefit of the doubt.
If that distro is even just half as good as it claims, then they need to seriously redesign the entire landing page to be more focused on what those gains are. And I say this as someone who's ran several open source projects myself and has immense difficulties designing landing pages for them. I know it's a hard thing to get right. In fact I think it's actually harder than creating a new distro.
> Because that’s not how homebrew works. And you can’t have a single image if you’re expecting people to install apps via their multiple different endorsed delivery mechanisms.
As the other poster said, Homebrew has nothing to do with this. Please read up on how the technology works before declaring this a contradiction.
> Because an App Store is ostensibly just a package manager. I get they’re making a distinction between desktop apps and CLI (homebrew does GUI apps too by the way), but when their emphasis is on “easy” and “one way to do things”, having two different ways to install apps contradicts their mission statement.
You don't install the same things using Homebrew and Flatpak. You install apps through Flatpak, and non-apps through Homebrew etc. There aren't two ways to install apps.
Are you referring to "casks" when talking about GUI apps through Homebrew? Is that even supported on Linux?
> If they actually cared about this mission statement AND had half the competence they claim, they’d build a unified UI that supports all use cases rather than expect people to learn those different tools and why it matters that they’re different.
No, you're just arbitrarily asking for them to make changes based on your misunderstandings of the use cases of each tool.
> The only reason you’d announce it would be because you hadn’t worked in this space before and feel a sense of achievement doing the bloody obvious. (And to be clear, I have zero issue with people having projects like these to learn new skills)
No, that's not the only reason, but you're looking at the project with an extremely narrow lense while not spending any time actually looking into the technology and project, so I can understand that it's the only reason you see.
> I am interested who you think this is targeting. Because they do specifically say this is for developers (amongst other people). And the reason they give (VSCode) is a pretty noob argument. If you can’t figure out how to install an IDE then you’re clearly tech savvy enough to be a developer.
If you'd spend 5 seconds reading up on the technology, you could easily steelman a better argument.
> You don't install the same things using Homebrew and Flatpak. You install apps through Flatpak, and non-apps through Homebrew etc. There aren't two ways to install apps.
except from a user perspective there is. You have to first consider what type of app you want, and then search for it using the correct package manager.
As I said, if they had a single UI that managed both flatpak and homebrew, then it would be different. Users shouldn’t need to know which technology was used to download and install a particular package - that's a technical distinction that should be abstracted away by the "App Store".
Now I completely understand why they've taken the approach they have. But they've made a technical decision to fragment the UX while advertising the app store for its simplicity.
> No, you're just arbitrarily asking for them to make changes based on your misunderstandings of the use cases of each tool.
I'm not asking them to make any changes and I definitely do not misunderstand these tools (fun fact: I maintain a few open source projects -- so I'm probably more familiar than most with how brew et al actually work).
I'm simply pointing out how their advertising doesn't gel with the reality of the UX they're providing. It is feedback, not a request nor demand.
But for what it's worth, if they did decide they wanted to look into the possibility or a "single pane of glass" for all app management, then KDE already has a tool that might work here and which already supports pulling from different sources via extensions: Discover (https://apps.kde.org/discover). So it might be worth them taking a look at the viability of use that (again, just feedback, not a request).
> No, that's not the only reason
That’s not a rebuttal. It’s just a contradiction.
> you're looking at the project with an extremely narrow lense
I’m really not. I’m comparing it against my 30 years of professional experience with Linux (and UNIX as a whole) administration and highlighting areas where their docs are coming across as amateurish.
I’m open to being proven there there is more going on than appears, but your replies amount to “you’re wrong” without actually providing any detail why.
I run Linux workstations and because I don't get paid for keeping my workstation up to date, I do look for something that's as low-effort to maintain as possible. So it's quite possible I'm the target audience for Aurora. But the project does such a poor job of explaining why I should use this instead of any of the hundreds of other distros.
This isn't me being narrow-minded because, as I said elsewhere, it's their job to convince me that I can trust them with my hardware and my sensitive data. And their site, in it's current state, doesn't do a good job of that. In it's current state, it feels like it's being managed by people who don't have a whole lot of experience in this field.
But as I also said elsewhere, I know better than most just how hard it is to get a landing page right for a project as complex as an OS. So I'm being critical from a place of empathy rather than dismissiveness.
> If you'd spend 5 seconds reading up on the technology, you could easily steelman a better argument.
I was asking you a question. There’s no need to be confrontational with me.
In my experience, it’s almost always the right wing parties who harm working class while supporting their own.
They just do a fabulous job of convincing the working and lower classes that they’re “one of the people” while shifting the blame onto other people (immigrants, disabled, anyone who wants a living wage from their 40+ hour job, etc).
I’m don’t think either the Uk or the US have had a properly “left” party in power. They are just a cosplaying, as you say. But that doesn’t mean that left wing parties don’t exist.
No. More like central or Western European parties. Or Green in the UK. Most left-wing politicians in America would seem right wing in, for example, Netherlands.
I think bringing communism into the discussion around left wing parties is as daft as saying all republicans or Tories are Nazis.
The problem with the UK and US is we’re so used to right wing policies that anything moderately left is considered “extreme”. There’s no nuance left because people are closed off to it. (And to be fair, may left wing folk don’t help when they call their right wing peers “racists”. There definitely needs to be more tolerance on both sides)
>No. More like central or Western European parties.
That couldn't be more vague. That's like saying I want a car like the ones in that parking lot over there.
You have no idea that some parties in Poland, Hungary or Romania would make Donald Trump look left wing.
When I asked you what type of left parties you claim are lacking, I expected to hear the exact policies you want but are lacking, not pointing at random parties that not everyone knows.
And we've have enough left wing and green policies in Europe since they're the ones who championed the "refugees welcome" open borders problem, gas dependence on Russian gas and denuclearisation.
Starting with clean valid semantic HTML makes it a whole heck of a lot easier to preview in a web browser or editor with a preview feature and gives you quite a few editing options. Granted, there are now live markdown previews in some editors, so this is less of a concern than it was. However, you can easily toss in some CSS in there to make things a little nicer, while the typical markdown preview is going to look like Netscape 2.
As for the templates... those are also HTML. You're just replacing the relevant part of the template's DOM with what you pulled from the source document. Same goes for any boxes on the page you need to stuff with generated content. Your index pages and blog lists are generated from the metadata and other items pulled from the relevant parts of the source documents using the favored html processsing library of the week.
edit: I think I did a terrible job answering your question in my initial reply.
Ultimately, a static site generator is doing what was the way that SGML was envisioned to function... you started with a simpler authoring document and passed it through a processing pipeline that generated a richer SGML document that was eventually output to some sort of output presentation form. My take is that instead of using yaml and markdown for the source documents you just use semantic html, and that templates just use everything that WHATWG has given us with modern HTML instead of that plus a template language.
Why would you want to mix Windows and Linux processes into one workflow on the same host?
I’m sure you’ve encountered a very niche problem that requires it, but I cannot think of any scenario where that kind of behaviour would be desirable vs splitting those workflows up.
Are you not able to have separate Windows and Linux hosts (eg VMs or containers) that are instigated to run in parallel as part of the same pipeline, but don’t rely on the same processes running in the same host?
Or at the very worst, use a TCP/IP based RPC to share state between the different hosts?
We're using OBS for building stuff (and heavily abuse it for the Linux side already) - a few things (like reverse dependency builds) make that more useful that most of the other stuff out there on complex projects. So when the requirement for some Windows builds came along (which are tiny compared to all the other stuff we're doing) we just ended up using WSL to have Windows workers in OBS. Also has some other advantages with how our cmake builds work (short version, developers can do their own bit in visual studio, and then a bit more checks run on CI where we can reuse the usual stuff without caring about Windows)
The Opensuse Build System. It's pretty good at figuring out if something needs rebuilding, so in some cases violating it and making it do stuff it's not supposed to is a sensible choice.
What is actually happening is designers are forcing non-native controls, in part because web technologies have infested every corner of software development these days. Unsurprisingly, those non-native widgets break in a plethora of ways when the system diverges even marginally from the OS defaults.
And instead of those designers admitting that they fucked up, they instead double down on their contempt for their users.
Also, can we please not call desktop applications “apps” in response to an article about an OS that predates smartphones by several decades.
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