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What problems does Linux have to overcome to get more users
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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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Windows ways to install applications:
Yup sounds absolute reasonable... Wtf?
Right but in practice nobody really uses the Windows store, and winget, chocolatey etc. are only used by geeks. For normal users it's always
On Linux you have:
Also it's relatively common for Linux software not to bundle its dependencies. I work for a company that makes commercial Linux software and they bundle Python (yes it's bad), but that depends on libffi and they don't bundle that. So it only works on distros that happen to have the specific ABI version of libffi that it requires. And you have to install it yourself. This is obviously dumb but it's the sort of thing you have to deal with on Linux that is simply never an issue on Windows or Mac.
Dependencies only become an issue if you don't distribute your source (allowing distros or individuals to compile against the shared libraries they actually have installed, and patch out minor compatibility issues). Since closed-source is frowned upon in the Linux world, it's unsurprising that there are various sorts of pressure to Not Do That.
Indeed, this is a root cause of the problem. But it is a problem. The Linux community needs to get off its high horse and make distribution of binary programs (which may or may not be open source) work properly.
Snap and Flatpak are definitely a step in the right direction at least.
ok.
What’s wrong with that? When I was cleaning out Windows recently, I was happy that I didn’t have to hunt down uninstall scripts in every program directory I wanted to remove.
Maybe I'm a bit jaded as I remember the time where windows application didn't even came with a basic uninstaller and didn't relied on InstallShield instead used their own installer.
Also I don't think that there is actually such log, and that "OS level application management" is just the good old "Programs and Features" dialog where it simply registers the path to the uninstaller.
On Linux on the other hand the applications place their stuff in well defined directories and the install script has to deliver the file manifest (and where to copy its content) otherwise the application or library would simply not work. Flatpak kinda does the same but uses a dedicated directory in the users home directory, Snaps uuhm I don't touch canonical stuff with a ten foot pole, AppImage just delete the file and your are golden.
That’s what I took that to mean, too. And it’s sufficient. It allows the OS to provide a single point from which to uninstall all programs.
Well then, when that's sufficient. Have you checked
%AppData%(Local, Roaming, LocalLow) for any residue?What I meant is that the “registering with the OS” part is sufficient. If the uninstallers suck, no operating system can do anything about that.