No. The philosophy is different: we offer you a vetted repository where we make it a breeze to install stuff. You’re not prevented from disagreeing and doing your own thing. There’s no lock on the door. That it’s not easy doesn’t mean that PureOS is locked down; it may mean it’s less friendly to random software. I mean, hey, you even installed one program without help!
Really? I am getting an impression you just want to bash something you didn’t find comfortable. In case I’m wrong and you’re not, my previous paragraph should settle it.
How do you know that? From my point of view, the amount and quality of resources for Windows is about the same as for Linux (consider Arch wiki), despite a lower desktop market share. Commands are by no means perfect, but they are way better for ad-hoc help - you can check here on the forums that a lot of people come up with commands from memory to help others.
It’s a matter of taste to some extent, but I agree that more GUI control would ease a switch from Windows for power users.
This is bringing nothing to the conversation. Please stop veiled insults or face getting banned.
I get what you’re trying to say, but at the same time, I feel it’s drifting into the NonStampCollector “free will” style of logic: oh sure, I have “free will” to install any software I want, but if it’s not from the “official store”, then all sorts of punishments will be doled out for not making the “correct” choice such as non-conventional installation and uninstallation, the program not being listed in the Installed Software list, and difficulty in upgrading the software. At this point, why don’t you just call installation from the “Official Store” compulsory?
Your opinion on my attitude aside, my logic is still sound. You constantly pushing the “Official Store” over being able to install quality software straight from an independent developer’s website is leaning toward a locked down environment in which Purism, SPC decides what software is allowed and what software isn’t. If that’s not quite the same as Google/Apple, it’s certainly heading in that direction. Heck, we can’t even install GNOME shell extensions without paying tribute to the all mighty Google. The ONLY way to get the official “GNOME Shell Integration” plugin is through Google Store? Is this a joke? And on an OS that encourages “de-Googling” your device no less! And you dare accuse me of hollow bashing? Looks I’m not the only one throwing “veiled insults” around…
Have you considered the possibility that these people wouldn’t be asking for help in the first place if they could accomplish their goals inside a GUI? Food for thought…
I think you’re redefining terms here, because “locked down” in no way implies the freedom to do whatever you please, nor “compulsory” means “you can also not do it”.
Maybe you’re mistaking what kind of freedom PureOS is providing. This freedom is not the convenience of forcing random third parties to integrate with our ecosystem. Make no mistake, the software maker is welcome to submit their software to be distributed as part of PureOS once they meet our standards of quality. They can even distribute their own software store, we’re not stopping them.
But the freedom of PureOS is the ability to modify your system in any way you please, including all the software we provide you (and we provide almost anything a computer user might need) – that is the property of PureOS that Windows cannot offer, by design. If you value having third party applications on the software list higher than you value this freedom, then maybe PureOS is not the best choice for you.
I’m not sure I understand this argument. Isn’t installing third part applications on the software list a certain kind of freedom? The freedom to say, “I want to install SlimJet because I like using that web browser, and it should be listed and easy to uninstall just like any other piece of software.” I’m pretty sure easy utilization of third party software is a kind of freedom. The kind Apple and Google don’t like giving you either. Don’t you see the pattern here?
Also side note: how do you clear DNS resolver cache in Linux?
You may, depending on the software of choice. This is convenience. As long as you mistake it for freedom, you’re going to remain dissatisfied with PureOS, because that’s not something we control.
I don’t think anyone ever said freedom is supposed to be easy, and the modern history is rife with examples of headwinds.
This thread starts to pop up in my unread list too often and I think that it is unnecessary.
There are two radically different and may it be contradicting objectives.
If you buy supported system, pay for support or use community driven (and financed by you or others) system/distribution and care at least a little about security then you want to be ensured that somebody has done review of the software you use and signed it by really hard to falsificate electronic signature that it is safe to use. If you buy from Purims and believe in their good intentions and security procedures then you install software from repositories they offer and are signed by their key. You, in theory, should be extra careful that initial keys received with computer or installed by initial system download are not modified. Purism provides extra options to ensure keys delivery… If you take care and check keys against published ones on their web and key rings servers etc, then it is relatively safe as well. As for the applications, Purism approves only these which are really fully open-source so you can check for malicious behavior yourselves a or can hope that even somebody else looking into sources found find the risk. You can pay for analysis and thanks to reproducible builds you can then check actual packages. But be prepared that security assessments are really expensive. Because OpenSSL is critical, there are many studies paid by big players, random link, it would be in range of ten million dollars for the work and more… You benefit from these investments etc…
So this is the gain if you use distribution as designed.
If you want to use some other software out of default repositories, then you can look for some serious provider for your operating system family. For Debian flavor, you can add another repository to APT sources list. Then you should obtain and add the signing key of the vendor and check that you can really trust to it. You will see available software and updates in management tools as Synaptic, Aptitude etc. I understand that you are probably desktop user used for point ant click system maintenance. Most people on this forum are probably of different attitude, I want to use procedures which can be repeated, automated and solved on many systems which I need to take care of remotely. So this is why there are suggestions for reproducible use of terminal tools. You have no problem to repeat steps reproducible, search reported errors on the Web etc. I hate reports from my students and users when thy send blurry mobile photo or screenshot. Providing manuals and document step for graphical tools is nightmare as well. But yes, for end user and many tasks has graphical interface advantages…
If the application vendor does not provide correct distribution procedure with repo then you have option to download package (think about it as Windows MSI and it is still at least visible in managers and with option to cleanly uninstall), or directly download binary and mess with the system without recorded way how to uninstall. Yet next level is to build package yourself. I have local Debian repo and repo on server for students and a university labs computers etc… So again fully maintainable etc… even for packages which are not packaged for my distro. Development ones, I install with /opt/sw_name during development. So no mess which I know from Windows.
I would like to know your practice on WIndows. If you locate software by Google and then install it from the link found then I expect that it is very high risk. Yes it is easy and comfortable. If it is MSI, it is signed, but you have no guarantee from it, it only proves that somebody paid to obtain software signing keys and have to trust that no trusted certificate authority has not signed certificate to somebody with malicious intention. You cannot check or pay someone to check whole sources etc. It is complete nightmare and development is as well (I know stories from my colleague solving signing of drivers we develop even for Windows)…
So I suggest to ordinary Windows users at least pay some part of the comfort and when usually standard functionality found in each Linux distribution is missing on Windows then locate given community developed software (even by Google) then try to find given project on Wikipedia, take link back to the project from the Wikipedia and then locate on the official site download section for Windows. I know that from security practice point it is still banned way but I hope that the risk is much smaller than random link from search engine. I believe that given software page on Wikipedia is visited often by knowledge people who would notice link change as well as report that project has been hijacked, stolen, transferred to some not so well behaving entity. But I consider still as the best practice to stay away from Windows entirely…
Please, consider to think about security, comfort, remote manageability etc. and ask for suggestions and good practices. But repeated rant about system not fitting your idea how it should work starts to be waste of time. And yes, if you are comfortable with Windows, stay with it. By the way, if you start to celebrate Microsoft technology, consider the first that they suppressed TCP/IP and when it was inevitable grabbed BSD TCP/P stack, then they tried to change HTTP standard to be unusable for all others and at the end they grab for free KHTM, Safari, Chrome development result and build closed Teams and edge from it. Same for many other technologies. So even if you use Windows you have no reason to derail people working on sound and free technologies to do the work which they like, you would need it daily.
No, I can’t. Not without having to learn what’s considered extremely advanced computing by Window’s standards. And I’m not the only one who thinks this. Here’s a comment by user “fotnite” on YouTube who sums up my thoughts and feelings about Linux (and its extremely toxic community) better than I ever could, but the most relevant paragraphs being:
I’d like to end my rant with another comment by user “Ethan”, who provides a great summary argument that, again, captures my thoughts and feelings about Linux as a whole:
With that being said, Having been using OS/2 for the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a vastly superior using experience using that obsolete OS than I have using any Linux distro: let that sink in. The only downside to using OS/2 is that there’s no real software development for it.
So in other words, the TLDR of this post is “In Linux, you will sacrifice freedom for security; and get neither.”
Sounds about right. But another thing you haven’t considered is that most software developers don’t have time, and can’t possibly submit their software for approval in every Linux distro there is out there. I mean, even submitting their software for approval in the top 20 Linux distros (of which, might I point out, PureOS is not even a part of [#46 as of the writing of this comment]) would be quite a chore. That’s an extremely unreasonable demand, and it’s yet another great example of what’s wrong with Linux as a whole. If I’m a major corporation like QuickBooks, then sure: maybe I do have the resources to make sure my software is submitted to every niche Linux distribution. But if I’m a little guy, I’m basically screwed. And that’s probably what makes me the most angry about Linux: for all this anti-corporate attitude amongst the Linux community, the “little guy” like SlimJet is who gets screwed over by these so-called “security” policies the most! Linux is actually the most “pro-corporate” operating system in existence! Even more so than Microsoft Windows!
I think you’re getting the point exactly. No one is stopping you except your own limitations. Freedom does not equal innate ability.
What Linux should be is in the eye of the beholder. Each distribution decides what it wants to be. PureOS decided to give users privacy and the 4 freedoms. Convenience is also there, but not as an overriding principle. If you don’t share those values, or are not satisfied with how we’re fulfilling them, you should try something else.
Or get your hands dirty and help us by getting involved with PureOS directly, or improving the adoption of Flatpak/AppImage. Those can and are built by the little guy.
I’m not sure what flushdns does, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.
Not exactly true. As my previous post mentioned, doing things exclusively via the GUI is the current, modern standard for conventional operating system usage. To put things into perspective, this isn’t just a “me” thing. The aforementioned Ethan’s comment got THOUSANDS of likes showing that the majority of casual computer users do not expect to have to master the goshdern command prompt in order to do something as mundane as install their favorite software. Let me reiterate: in NO other operating system IN EXISTENCE do you have to open a command prompt in order to install third party software; not Windows, not MacOS, and not even Android/ChromeOS. Only in Linux is this necessary. What we have here is a failure of Linux to keep up with industry standards.
Furthermore, one could argue that PureOS is violating Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program as you wish. Locking down the operating system so that it makes it extremely difficult to run third party software isn’t giving me the freedom to run programs as I wish. And by “I”, I mean the computing industry as a whole. As I previously mentioned, this isn’t just a “me” thing.
“Extremely difficult” doesn’t in itself negate a freedom. You’re free to swim across the lake. You’re free to solve that sudoku puzzle. You’re free to run your legal copy of Microsoft Word on PureOS (probably). All those things may be extremely difficult to you, but no one will stop you, so that doesn’t diminish the freedom.
From what I’m observing, the freedom to run as you wish is limited by intentionally locking down the abilities. None of that is true for PureOS, although it might be true for other Linux distributions.
The other thing is that Linux is not a single thing. Quite the opposite: if it suddenly converged to all distributions doing things the same, I would personally use my 4 freedoms to create a new one doing things differently.
As such, your criticism is incomplete: in some distributions you need to install third-party software via the command line. In some, as long as the third-party did their homework, it’s clickety-click. You did it yourself:
That, of course, depends on the third party. We can’t force them to do anything, because - you guessed it - we value freedom. Just kidding. We have no control over how third parties provide their software for PureOS. So blame them first, and only then PureOS.
I posted the link to the issue tracker where you can work out how to solve your issues with PureOS.
Umm…do you not know what the term “industry standards” means? MacOS is as different from Microsoft Windows as the East is from the West. Yet they both allow their users to accomplish their primary functions exclusively through the use of a GUI. I’m not asking that all Linux distos be identical. I’m asking that they implement generally accepted computing standards.
This…is quite the shocking fallacy. Nobody but nobody outside of Purism, SPC develops software for PureOS. In fact, rarely do people develop software for any specific Linux distro; not even major ones such as Mint or Ubuntu. Usually, they develop software for distro foundations: e.g. “Debian based” or “Fedora/Red Hat based”. This reply is a great example of just how toxic the Linux community really is. It’s shocking really. Even the Mac community isn’t this bad.
I know, they start with the letters “ISO”, or “RFC” Choose a cnvention and you’ll find a Linux distribution whose entire reason for existence is to not adhere to it. There’s no point asking otherwise, distributions are made of people, and people are different. Find your team and focus it on your priorities.
On Debian:, On OSX:, On Arch Linux:, On openSUSE Tumbleweed:, On Void (Linux):
So no, software commonly does get packaged per-distribution.
But you do have a point: few people build stuff specifically for PureOS. That’s why I mentioned Flatpak and AppImage. Those are the projects that make it unnecessary to target a single distribution. Still, the burden of using them (correctly) lies on the third party, and only if that fails, then on PureOS.
Umm…you do realize there does not exist in all of Linuxdom a distro that allows you to do what you want entirely from the GUI, right? Sooner or later, you’re going to have to fall back on Linux’s gratuitous dependency on the command prompt. I mean, seriously dude. I wouldn’t be here if such a distro existed.
You’re being a bit dishonest. Those programs are packaged as .deb files which can be installed on any Debian based distro including our very own PureOS. You’re acting like these programs can only be installed exclusively on a specific distro when that couldn’t be further from the truth (for example, I checked Pathfinder Kingmaker: Imperial Edition and found that it works flawlessly on Debian, Linux Mint, and Pop_OS).
Yeah, in a perfect world, everyone would use Flatpak. But they don’t, so we’re still stuck with the convention of having to deal with manual installation via .deb files. And PureOS goes out of its way to make it somewhat difficult to install software via .deb files.
I realize that there might not exist a distro that doesn’t allow you what you, a Windows power user want to do with a GUI. Thankfully, in Linuxdom, you have the 4 Freedoms widely enough that you can create a Linuxduchy where you can reach that goal. It’s not necessarily going to be PureOS though, we’re good here.
In my experience, this is very often indeed the case. If you try to request support for a crash on another distro coming from the mere ability to install the package, you’re counting on the author’s goodwill. But as a Linux newbie, you had no way to know that, so I’m taking no offense at your accusation of dishonesty.
There’s a difference between doing our own thing and going out of our way. The baseline and starting point in building a distribution is choosing to have 0 software. For a Debian-based one, Debian is the baseline, and Debian doesn’t have any graphical software manager other than PureOS does, as far as I can tell. Understandably, you may not like it, but there’s no malice on PureOS part, so keep that to yourself.
Power user by what standard? The only person who I’ve ever come across who’s called installing third party software a “power user” move is you: the only person on the planet who thinks this. I say installing third party software isn’t a “power user” move. Prove me wrong. I, on the other hand, have given you three examples (Windows, MacOS, Android) of operating systems where installing third party software is NOT considered a “power user” move.
If it’s open source software, then you’re always going to be counting on the author’s goodwill for ANY kind of bug support whether it’s made for a specific distro or not. So this isn’t a valid argument.
There is malice on PureOS part. They could be making the software vastly more user friendly, but they don’t. This is exactly the kind of toxic behavior the Linux community is famous for: it’s something not even Microsoft would do! Sure, they’ve made some decisions that even I have disagreed with. But at least they listen to feedback, and make changes based on that feedback (Windows 8 vs. Windows 10 being a good example). The Linux community refuses to even meet you halfway.
Amazing, considering that I didn’t even say this. I thought you complaned that you want to do everything by the GUI, including package management.
Are you serious, or are you just trying to argue? If it’s the latter, then let me know so that I can say good bye.
I didn’t realize Pathfinder: Kingmaker was open source software. Or are you just cherry-picking your examples? By the way, releasing open source in no way precludes lack of support.
You could help us make the software vastly more user-friendly, but you don’t. SlimJet could be packaging Flatpaks, but they don’t. Microsoft could release Windows as open source, but they don’t. How do you explain those examples of malice?
I’m getting an impression that you’re a little too sensitive about certain topics to accept that you’re not getting what you want unless you get your hands dirty and start contributing to the solutions to your problems (links above). Feedback is useful, but not nearly as useful as walking the walk. Unlike Windows, you’re not gated from participating, you’re encouraged (unless you exhibit a toxic attitude).
And that’s quite the literal flush no less:
Choose a cnvention and you’ll find a Linux distribution whose entire reason for existence is to not adhere to it. There’s no point asking otherwise, distributions are made of people, and people are different. Find your team and focus it on your priorities.