[Interest] Official linuxdeployqt ?

[Roland Hughes]

On 8/9/22 05:00, Vadim Peretokin wrote:
> Just to correct some biases here, in my opinion as a software publisher
> AppImage is still the simplest way for a user to run your app.?
>
> To get Mudlet (a FOSS text games client) all you need to do is go to
> https://www.mudlet.org/download, download the .tar, right-click to
> extract it and double-click to run.?

Not to discount your experience, but I've been in IT almost 40 years 
now. Not once in my career have I ever used an AppImage. I have used 
Debian, RPM, Snap, and Flatpak.

Most companies and many Linux distros have started making it more 
difficult for someone to "just download and install from a Web site" 
because Malware is everywhere.

When your OpenSource project includes the scripts to make a proper 
Debian or RPM package, you dramatically increase the odds of getting 
your package into the actual distro repos. Does any distro actually put 
AppImage files in their repo? I'm asking. I have never heard of it but 
that doesn't mean there isn't some obscure distro doing that.

Ubuntu will eventually abandon Snap just like they did UpStart.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTYwNDE

Ubuntu has a history of bad ideas, Unity not even being the worst.

In fact, Ubuntu has already started their migration away from Snap by 
installing Flatpak out of the box in Ubuntu Mate 22.04

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/02/ubuntu-mate-22-04-flatpak-support

Why? Because the Linux distros that matter, some of them YABUs 
themselves have all integrated Flatpak.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/02/ubuntu-mate-22-04-flatpak-support

You have to understand where it is going to understand why. Arch based 
distros tried to solve this problem in their own way years ago.

The Linux world demands a single trusted vetted repository. Then Linux 
can seriously be considered for corporate desktops. It already has 
applications like TextMaker and OnlyOffice, etc. What it doesn't have is 
a single trusted repository.

What the Linux world currently has is a bunch of AGILE "developers" 
hacking on the fly, trusting automated tests that either test nothing or 
test the wrong thing, turning stuff into distro specific repos that 
busts things all over. Ubuntu has pushed out updates that broke all wifi 
networking for users. If your device couldn't support a hard wired 
connection you couldn't fix it.

Core run-time like C/C++ major changes or the not that long ago SSL 
change trash things.

I've argued for decades that DOS didn't do it wrong. Everything bound 
into a single executable was the only way to maintain security and 
stability. Here now we have the Linux world trying to not admit shared 
libraries (forced out of necessity in the dual floppy days) were always 
a bad idea. A high risk shortcut to resource limitations.

The Linux, Windows, and MAC worlds refuse to fix the problem. They keep 
dynamically linking and an update that should have no impact on your 
application what-so-ever shoots it out of the saddle by replacing one of 
your required libraries with an incompatible version.

Snap wasn't the correct idea. Flatpak is. It's basically a better Docker 
and now many distros are having their graphical application installer 
use Flathub directly.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/02/ubuntu-mate-22-04-flatpak-support

This will increase, not decrease, as the cost and effort each distro 
incurs trying to find "volunteers' to be "maintainers" and physically 
maintaining their repo has gotten too high.

Why do you think there are so many YABU distros? Someone wants a new 
distro for something, they want stability, and they only want to change 
a few things (usually packaged applications) for their distro. That's 
how Linux Mint and so many others happened.

The Linux world is moving towards Flathub being the one place all 
applications exist. All of them allowed to be shown in the GUI 
installers will have been vetted by someone at Flathub and have active 
malware/virus scans run on them. This is the end to a LibreOffice update 
jacking your favorite IDE or PDF viewer by installing an incompatible 
library. It has the hope of security.

No offense man, but anybody can get a .whatever URL and post an 
downloadable package on it. We in the Linux world have been far too 
trusting and burned too often by that. I know that I don't personally 
run daily virus/malware scans on the Debian and RPM packages I have 
posted. I just replace with newer versions often. Nothing says that 
Russia/China/North Korea/insert-nation-here didn't slip in an plant 
something.

Today's users and companies are starting to "just use the GUI" to find 
their applications. Maybe they won't find yours, but they will find 
something close enough. There are thousands of games, text editors, 
IDEs, and office packages. Almost all of what you need (perhaps all) can 
be found on Flathub now.

---

The "just copy" conversation.

Been a while since I did anything meaningful with Qt because the medical 
device and embedded systems world has mostly abandoned it. The 
CopperSpice stuff I've been doing like the RedDiamond editor uses hand 
edited CMakeLists.txt files. Not as horrible as it sounds.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/reddiamond/

Everything started with the one for the Diamond editor and everyone just 
tweaks it for all applications. It copies all of the needed libraries 
into the same directory as the executable. (You need to know what you 
need and it only copies CopperSpice libraries, not base OS libraries.) 
All of the plug-ins are in a subdir under the exe.

This makes things incredibly easy after running LDD on the binary. You 
can quickly create your script files to generate Debian and RPM 
packages. I have some as part of that project for those who wish to look.

Currently CopperSpice doesn't cleanly compile in the Flatpack world 
where they don't want even the slightest warning. Supposed to get fixed 
after they get Ubuntu 22.04 compilation warnings cleaned up.

Eventually I will remove all of my Debian and RPM packages and just have 
Flatpak. For any "consumer level" app, that's where myself and those I 
speak with are all going. We can automatically be included in distros 
that will give us access to millions of desktops. They don't have to 
stumble into us on the Web.

---

Any linuxdeployqt is still going to have significant issues with all of 
those distros using /lib and /lib64 directories. Then you have to deal 
with /lib-arm for cross compilation.


-- 

Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

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