[NBLUG/talk] Linux Mint's "popularity, " package management, and features + NBLUG 7/12 meeting recap
Brad Morrison
bradmorrison at sonic.net
Wed Jul 13 22:35:27 PDT 2022
Hi Rick, et al,
Thanks for the in depth responses! I was hoping to see you at the
meeting last night as what you wrote was so interesting that I had more
questions after I read your email than before. Always a good sign!
- I do understand that Distrowatch is not a direct measure of the actual
users of any given Linux distro, but their page-hit ranking is the
closest thing I've ever seen to an updated count, even if it is just
indicating an interest in a particular distro. Is there another way to
measure the number of users of a Linux distro? Linux Mint has a
community site (https://community.linuxmint.com/) that lists about
36,000 website users, about 15,000 hardware users, and other random
stats. And maybe the other big distros also track their users that
contribute to the forums or fill out informal surveys, but I have not
seen a ranking like Distrowatch's anywhere else.
- my thinking on the timeliness of updates sprung from the idea that
more users leads to more developers & funds, more developers and funds
leads to more energy available to do the work of packaging/testing apps.
Although, now that I think more about it, Clem at Linux Mint has seemed
to have a relaxed attitude towards updates and security matters too (at
least until the LM website got hacked several years back), so it may
also be a mindset of the core development team of each distro.
- according to https://community.linuxmint.com/ LMDE is about 9% of
Linux Mint users.
- thanks for the clarification on the relationship between *buntu and
Debian when it comes to package management. While I don't understand
what binaries are well enough to get the concept of *buntu and Debian
binaries not being compatible, I was mostly basing my understanding that
Linux Mint is *buntu based, but uses Debian package management from the
Distrowatch categories
(https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint).
We did talk a bit about which distros people use among the NBLUG members
that showed up to last night's monthly meeting. There seemed to be some
interest in Arch Linux, so Derek: it looks like EndeavourOS is the most
"popular" Arch Linux based distribution right now
(https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=endeavour) and it looks
to use a rolling release model and pacman for package management. Maybe
worth a look if you are concerned about Slackware (#15! -
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackware) crumbling
should Patrick Volkerding ever get hit by a bus. Slackware apparently
uses TXZ for package management - I haven't even heard of that one!
There was also an overview of some of the basics of NBLUG, which I found
really helpful as a new member/board member:
- we are not an incorporated nonprofit organization
- we have no bank account and the treasurer is Matt, but I don't believe
that I have met him yet
- prior to the pandemic, NBLUG has met at Sonic's offices in Santa Rosa
and O'Reilly's offices in Sebastopol and it would be nice to have an
indoor space available for when the weather turns colder and rainier as
well as the ability to have a screen and do presentations
- the NBLUG server is hosted at Sonic by a member
- we aren't exactly sure how many people are currently on the talk and
announce mailing lists
- NBLUG is not a local chapter of a larger LUG organization. This is
partly why we don't have a formal membership/nonprofit structure and do
not ask for dues. This point was actually shocking to me as I had
assumed that NBLUG was somewhat like another group that I am a member
of, the North Bay Electric Auto Association (https://nbeaa.org/), which
is a local chapter of the national Electric Vehicle Association
(https://www.myeva.org/) that manages some membership functions and
provides some resources. The NBEAA has bylaws/standards that are
provided by the national EVA and that we have to meet in order to stay
affiliated (pretty simple to do though). There doesn't seem to be any
functioning national/international LUG and I went through a lot of dead
links trying to even find a list of local groups. I did find
https://www.linuxusersgroups.org/ but it is pretty out of date and NBLUG
doesn't seem to be listed there. That seems like an enormous opportunity
to do some organizing in the area of LUGs that could really pay
dividends in terms of increased usage & interest in Linux and membership
for the LUGs. Maybe others know more about this area than I do though...
Over and out!
Brad
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:45:51 -0700
> From: Rick Moen<rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To:talk at nblug.org
> Subject: Re: [NBLUG/talk] talk Digest, Vol 199, Issue 4
> Message-ID:<20220711224551.GK13985 at linuxmafia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> Quoting Brad Morrison (bradmorrison at sonic.net):
>
>> I use Linux Mint partly because it is ranked on DistroWatch as the
>> third most popular Linux distro
>> (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint), so I assumed
>> that more users translates to more frequent updates.
> Doesn't follow, really.
>
> There are lots of reasons why the timeliness of updates has no
> connection to the number of users. However, it's also the case that
> DistroWatch's distro ranking isn't, and cannot be, based on number of
> users. As the display's name says, it's a "Page Hit Ranking". It's
> just a summary of the number of times someone searched for a particular
> named distro using the Distrowatch site search engine.
>
>> LM does appear to use a fixed release model instead of rolling.
> Both the _regular_ edition of Linux Mint (compatible with Ubuntu's
> repos) and Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) are released-based rather
> than rolling, yes.
>
> LMDE doesn't have a separate entry on Distrowatch, so it's not included
> in the "Page Hit Ranking" list. Searching for it brings up Linux Mint,
> so I just incremented LM's Distrowatch "popularity" by 1. ;->
>
>> I haven't really thought about it before, but it looks like Linux Mint
>> is a Ubuntu based distro (whatever that means)
> It means that Clément Lefèbvre and friends started with the then-current
> release of Kubuntu 6.10 in 2006 and fixed them with various desktop
> enhancements and saner DE choices, and each LM release is
> binary-compatible with a concurrent *buntu release.
>
>> but uses Debian for its package management - ?
> No. *buntu is closely based on Debian and is a persistent fork from it
> (but is no longer binary-compatible), and therefore *buntu uses lots and
> lots of Debian-standard administrative tools including the distinctive
> dpkg and apt package-management tools and the .deb package format.
>
>> Do the distros usually package the apps themselves or
>> does Ubuntu/Debian do that?
> Yes. But sometimes a distro exists as a binary-compatible variation on
> a more-established distro, compatible with the established distro's
> package repositories but adding some of its own bespoke packages to
> create something different or specialised.
We can talk about this more at the NBLUG meeting on Tuesday, but I am
curious what Linux distros other members use and why they prefer
Yup, an excellent topic for the meeting.
And by the way, are you aware of the #nblug IRC channel? It's usually
at least a little bit busier than the talk list. Not to discourage
anyone from using the talk list, but... well, not many people seem to
post here.
- Derek
On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 04:28:14 -0700, Brad Morrison
<bradmorrison at sonic.net> wrote:
> Thanks for the explanation of my options Derek! I do tend to like to
> use the latest software/package versions, but I have heard enough
> other people at NBLUG complain about what they felt were useless
> changes to the user interface of certain packages/apps that they use
> to know that many people do not update as frequently as I like to do.
>
> I use Linux Mint partly because it is ranked on DistroWatch as the
> third most popular Linux distro
> (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint), so I assumed
> that more users translates to more frequent updates. LM does appear
> to use a fixed release model instead of rolling. I haven't really
> thought about it before, but it looks like Linux Mint is a Ubuntu
> based distro (whatever that means), but uses Debian for its package
> management - ? Do the distros usually package the apps themselves or
> does Ubuntu/Debian do that?
>
> We can talk about this more at the NBLUG meeting on Tuesday, but I am
> curious what Linux distros other members use and why they prefer
> _____.
>
> Brad
>
> On 7/6/22 12:00,talk-request at nblug.org wrote:
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Re: preferences on software package versions, thoughts on
>> Snap/Flatpak/Appimage (Derek B. Noonburg)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2022 15:00:12 -0700
>> From: "Derek B. Noonburg"<derekn at foolabs.com>
>> To:talk at nblug.org
>> Subject: Re: [NBLUG/talk] preferences on software package versions,
>> thoughts on Snap/Flatpak/Appimage
>> Message-ID: <20220705150012.0db9bc45 at numbat>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>>
>> If you want the latest versions of applications, your choices come
>> down to:
>>
>> (1) Run a Linux distribution that updates things often, which
>> probably means a rolling release distro. Oh, and you also need to
>> make sure that the distro packages the particular apps you want.
>>
>> (2) Run binaries built by the application developers. Lately those
>> have been moving toward flatpak/appimage/snap/whatever. I haven't
>> personally played with any of those formats, but they feel pretty
>> kludgey to me -- "All these Linux distros have different library
>> versions... I know, we'll package up all of the libraries (almost a
>> mini Linux distro) with our app." I guess that approach does "fix"
>> the problem, but ick.
>>
>> This also has the downside of requiring you to make sure the apps
>> get updated -- as you pointed out.
>>
>> (3) Build the applications yourself from source. This avoids
>> library version problems, but obviously requires some extra work.
>> Maybe worth it if you have a small number of applications that you
>> really care about keeping current, maybe not.
>>
>> Also, some applications are pretty easy to build from source, and
>> some are a major pain in the butt. It's kind of hard to tell until
>> you actually try to build them.
>>
>> This has the same update problem as option 2.
>>
>> It would be nice if the Linux folks could settle on a single desktop
>> distribution, so that application developers could simply package
>> for that distro. But:https://xkcd.com/927/
>>
>> Given all of that, do you really need the absolute latest versions
>> of those applications? For system libraries and common attack
>> targets (web browsers), you clearly want to apply security updates
>> promptly. Centralized system updates are great for that. For other
>> things... how many security updates (as opposed to bug fix and
>> feature updates) does FreeCAD (for example) receive?
>>
>> If you really do want the updates -- maybe you ran into a bug in
>> FreeCAD that's been fixed, maybe Mint has a particularly old
>> version, or whatever -- if there are only a couple applications
>> like that, then maybe it's worth considering option 2 (or 3) for
>> just those applications.
>>
>> - Derek
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:50:04 -0700
>> Brad Morrison<bradmorrison at sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> As I'm fairly new to Linux, I'm sure that there are reasons for why
>>> the software packages in the Ubuntu repositories are often not the
>>> latest versions available via the various projects' websites. I
>>> tend to prefer to not use Flakpak/Flathub, after reading a blog
>>> post from Clem, the project lead of Linux Mint (which is the
>>> distro I use) about his concerns about Snap
>>> (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906). But I have noticed that for
>>> both FreeCAD and gnuCash, the Flatpak versions are considerably
>>> more recent/updated than the "Ubuntu" version (is that what you
>>> call it?) also available in the Linux Mint software manager.https://www.linuxusersgroups.org/
>>>
>>> FreeCAD: 18.4 for the Ubuntu version v. 19.4 for the Flathub
>>> version -https://www.freecadweb.org/
>>>
>>> gnuCash: 3.8b for the Ubuntu version v. 4.10+ for the Flathub
>>> version -https://www.gnucash.org/
>>> <https://www.gnucash.org/>
>>>
>>> I could also download the appimage from the FreeCAD website, but I
>>> like centrally managed updates.
>>>
>>> Does anyone else have any thoughts to share on this? Preferences?
>>>
>>> And I've also wondered how the desktop version of Signal is set up
>>> so that the package is installed via the Linux Mint software
>>> manager, but the updates come via the web (from Signal). Is that
>>> another approach to similar issues?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
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