That’s the lemmy echo chamber. Poll a hundred people on how to get a program onto a computer without a browser and I’d be surprised if five people answered something other than a disk or that it’s impossible
Even saying “with a package manager” it’s much easier to have a browser to make a search to know what you want to enter to install using the package manager!
I’m sure many Linux users would be dead in the water if they were provided a computer with a distro without a browser/GUI package manager and no alternative way to access the internet.
Quick! You need to install a program, but you can’t remember the exact name of it. You have no browser installed nor a GUI package manager. What do you do?
Okay, how are you going to install a browser if you don’t know what to type? Sure, I know FF is Mozilla.Firefox, but not everyone does. And besides, I actually want Vivaldi(…only as an example) instead, which I don’t know the package name for. Without a pre-existing browser or external help, how am I supposed to install Vivaldi?
I’m not disagreeing there should be options on OS setup, firefox being pre-installed with no input is barely better than Edge being pre-installed, but no browser at all by default is just stupid for most people. If we’re going with the idea of options on setup, the no browser at all option should exist, but only if it’s behind at least 1 but preferably 2 “Are you absolutely sure?” confirmation checks.
If a Distro preinstalls the Torbrowser it is based. Or maybe a Firefox that is actually debloated and hardened, not just having fancy bookmarks and a custom start page (looking at you Fedora)
I think it’s fine if you give the option to uninstall it, many users wouldn’t know where to look to install the browser right away and they need access to the internet to find out (because they’re not familiar with the command line), they probably have a phone to look stuff up, but that’s bad user experience.
Otherwise a first run welcome screen that asks the user which browser they want to install out of a selection (including none) can be a good solution
That’s a pretty bad take, people into tech seem to mostly use firefox, people who aren’t probably don’t care, and for the people who know baout it and prefer another, can well, just uninstall it, so why not just have firefox so its simpler for everyone?? Like, on Manjaro and Garuda I could do well with that, but what if I use Ubuntu? The browser I like the most is Vivaldi, witch isn’t on the package manager, meaning that I need to download a browser to download another one instead of just using the one already in it to get it
A package typically includes the program and its data inside the package. It’s not just an install script. Imagine if Chrome’s MSI installer was simply a wrapper that also downloaded the browser. Imagine if there was a vulnerability with this, and it downloaded and installed something else. Since the package didn’t include the program files, it wouldn’t be able to tell if they were genuine. It only fetched the MSI, which was a download that initially passed the expected checksum (if it even does that).
Additionally, file lists help ensure that programs and packages don’t conflict with one another. What if you wanted Chromium and Chrome at the same time. Can you do that? Simply wrapping an MSI doesn’t guarantee that. Perhaps there are conditionals in an installer that includes a vendored library under some circumstances, which would make them conflict.
What about package removals? Some programs leave a bunch of junk behind in their uninstaller. Typically, since packages very often contain their own files, they simply delete their files when they’re being upgraded or removed. If a package manager puts full trust in an MSI to always be exactly correct, then it loses complete control over correctly managing file removals.
I could go on and on, with more examples, but “run this binary installer” is the Wild West of putting software on your system. This is mostly the status quo on Windows, but this is a very poor standard. Other operating systems have solved this problem with proper packaging for decades.
When building a package from sources, it makes sense to wrap installers, but then you produce a package that is typically distributed by a mirror. These packages would then by downloaded by you, and contain the source of truth that is trusted to be what it is and that it’ll do what it’s supposed to do without any doubts to consistency and security.
Either the community on GitHub, or someone inside Microsoft.
You can find their repository here (I think most people here are not interested in it tho lol)
I have packaged some software for winget back when I was still using Windows, and yes it runs msi ( or exe ) silently under the hood. Installation processes that are usually done on GUI are automated just like how Homebrew does.
Yeah, but it’s mid at best. Many apps open a GUI installer even with winget. Also updates for many apps don’t work (if the app doesn’t save its version properly in the registry).
I get better performance from the release version than from ESR. The ESR version in Debian has always been slower than the release version for me. Especially on YouTube.
Not op, but nothing significant IMO unless you’re a web developer (in which case it’s worth considering using the dev edition instead) or just want the latest features.
The ESR on Debian gets updated reasonably frequently with backported security patches and bug fixes
Not all security issues get CVEs. Thats only the security parts. Its old as balls, and Firefox never had any breaking bugs for me, thats the “old as balls” part
Recently switched to using Flatpaks instead of random .debs for a number of apps on my system. /var/lib/flatpak takes up 7GiB, which honestly isn’t that much (even though it’s like quarter of the OS size), given that’s the software I use most of the time.
Was skeptical at first about Flatpaks, but SteamOS showed me that is great at just giving OS developers access to a fully populated app store with minimal work.
Honestly, nowadays I’d say “ability to install flatpaks” should be the criteria on which we decide whether an OS is really “linux” or not (that is, SteamOS is, but Android isn’t).
Edit: Okay. I said something stupid here, my bad. What I was trying to get at is the distinction between Android, etc. and “Desktop” Linuxes like traditional distros, Chromebooks and the Steam Deck. Even though it technically runs Linux, it’s hard to argue that developers for Android are really writing apps that work on “Linux”. Wheras if someone releases a Flatpak version of their app because they think the Steam deck is cool, it works on other distros “for free”.
Yup, Flatpaks are indeed great. Isolation, modern versions, no weird dependencies.
I have to manage a Debian PC fleet and I am too stupid for Ansible, so they all just got cleaned up extremely, all that bloat gone, apps replaced with flatpaks and now the system has like ⅓ the packages. Automatic updates then, VirtualBox is the only stupid thing with their kmod and all, but Virtmanager is also already on there.
Not all apps can be flatpaks, for example virt-manager, gnome-boxes can but its really restricted then.
But keeping the system slim just makes so much sense, its like removing this distro randomness which I am sure is needed for Linux to get their shit together and stop doing the same work at 10 different places.
It lost a lot of the super-good touchscreen PDF functionality when it switched to chromium though, which I am still mad about. I hope at one point MS will return the PDF Viewer from the original edge
Chrome does have tab groups, but I don’t find them super useful. Automatic grouping by domain would be nice for my usage since I only use chrome at work.
I’ve never once had links take any sort of noticeable time to open outside of the scanner link/redirect. Which doesn’t have to do with edge or outlook. You probably are conflating two issues.
No other browser does this, and it only happens when opening the link from outlook. Which does make sense to me because edge has some kind of outlook integration. Probably our incompetent network admin and weird ass network and AD situation does not help, but it’s still a bunch of microsoft products that don’t work properly together.
I was not aware that’s a thing. So you’re saying every link I get on outlook has a redirect link stuck in front of it because of azure AD? But why does that not cause chrome or firefox to load the pages slowly?
In some configurations outlook will replace links with something like this (domain is incorrect, but here’s the gist) outlookvirusscanner.outlook.com?scanredirect=theoriginalink.com
So yes, that WILL slow you down, but there is a valid reason for it. If that’s the reason I have no idea why the others wouldn’t be slow. It might just be a I use x at home vs y at work type deal?
My work stuff wont work in firefox, yeah that’s a new fun enterprise thing. In any case I use edge on osx for those few sites, firefox for everything else.
I’m amaze by how many people still use chrome based browser. They really want to get their face eat by a leopard. Well we told you people, there’s no reason left not to use firefox.
Chromium isn’t chrome, and there are reasons to use browsers not based on firefox, I like Vivaldi more than firefox way better customization and more features, but since Manifest V3 exists I am using firefox so I am already used to it if Google makes the other browsers shit
Workgroups, tab stacking, tab tiling, side by side view of multiple websites which you can interact with at the same time within one window, keyboard only control (if desired) and more.
Most or all of those are available in extensions and keyboard only I think is in stock FF but I can understand not wanting to install a million extensions to recreate that functionality. I was a die hard old school Opera user but just can’t bring myself to daily drive a chromium based browser.
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