by torginus | 2025-09-11 07:14:04+00:00
I approve of this - Linux distributions need to go and they needed to go about 20 years ago. They are the fundamental reason why Linux is not successful.

Distributions are literally the worst thing about Linux - and by worst I really mean it in a way that is filled with the most amount of disgust and hate possible, like one feels toward a literal or social parasite.

Linux distros provide little to no value (after all these people just package software), they are just vehicles for petty losers to build their own fiefdoms, where they can be rules. They are (and the people who run them) acid on the soul, they poison the spirit of openness and sharing, by controlling who gets to use what

There existence was always political and the power they wielded over who gets to use and see your software was stomach-churningly disproportional to the value they provided.

Much like petty internet forums with pathethic power tripping mods, a given linux distro's maintainers get to decide that you, the dear programmer, the actual creator of value, gets to have his work judged, and his right to deliver his software to users by a distro maintainer a petty tyrant who might not have the time or might have some weird mental hangup about shipping your software. And even if they do, they might fuck up your package and the distro-crafted bugs will reflect badly on you.

I can shit on Microsoft and Apple all I want and it'll never impede my ability to deliver software to my users.

This is why open source failed on the desktop, and why we have three orders of magnitude more open-source zealots, and ignorant believers than actual programmers who work on useful stuff.

Why no one with actual self-respect actually builds software for the Linux desktop out of their own free will, and why garbage dumps and bugs and missing features persist for decades.

Imagine the humiliating process it takes for a dev to ship a package on Linux - first you have to parlay with maintainers to actually include your stuff. Then they add a version that's at best half-year out of date to jive with their release cadence. You're forced to use their vendored and patched libraries which are made bespoke for their use cases, and get patched for the 5 apps that they care about, and can break your stuff at a drop of a hat.

And no, you can't ship your own versions, because they'll insta reject your package.

This is literal Windows 98 dll hell, but Microsoft was at least a for-profit company you could complain to and they actually had a financial stake in making sure users software worked. Not so with Linux distros, they just wanna be in charge and tell everyone what they get to use.

Then you have

First, Ubuntu and snap should burn in hell. Much like their other efforts, they made an universal system that's hated by everyone and used by no one except for them and they keep pushing it with their trademark dishonest tactics copied from other dishonest vendors, like even if you get rid of the excrement that is snap, they keep reinstalling it via updates.

Flatpak was meant to work like a reasonable package manager would - you assume a stable OS base and demand and provide that, full stop. This is how Windows and Mac OS worked forever, and it doesn't even occur to devs that people using these OSes will have trouble running their software.