When you double click on a deb package in Ubuntu 23.10 an error appears to tell you "there is no app installed for 'Debian package' files". In this post I
New users probably shouldn’t be installing .debs, especially if they don’t know about terminal commands. I’ve seen so many fucked up systems from people treating Linux as Windows, as in installing everything by searching for stuff on their browser, downloading an installer and installing that.
Problem is a lot of closed source software still release their software as .deb or .rpm packages that installs their repos so you can install their software from the software centre.
If you tell new users they shouldn’t be installing Discord the way Discord tells them to, you’re only sending them back to Windows.
Most damage I’ve seen comes from PPAs and other repositories, indivual deb files usually come from proprietary software that’ll package all of its shitty proprietary dependencies.
Tell them to install via flatpak. Spotify, Discord and so on should be available as flatpak via Gnome Software or the KDE software center. NOW on Ubuntu, this is anyone’s guess. I’m guessing there is no flatpak support by default. Ubuntu is doing the linux community a disservice.
I’m telling them that because it is a poor idea. But preferably the system should fix user mistake and behind the scenes just install Discord from repo or flatpak, with option to bypass this behaviour for those who know what they’re doing.
Preferably these software vendors would know to guide users towards proper ways of installing stuff, but that’s not happening.
“not being exactly like Windows” isn’t a problem at all.
Also, absolutely everyone is familiar with systems that use a central app repository instead of downloading executables with a browser, on their phone.
“Oh look, this software isn’t available in the selection that Fedora/Ubuntu/Mint/whatever decided I should have. I guess I can’t install it despite the fact that there are compatible packages for my distro.”
Yeah right. Walled garden horseshit. Linux apologists do anything they can to move goalposts, to the point where using it is fucking impossible if you actually listen to every asshole’s personal opinion.
If you can’t adapt to the user’s behavior YOU are in the wrong. End of fucking story.
And seriously, you’re using an app store to illustrate why limiting user choice is good. What the actual fuck are you doing on a Linux sub anyway?
If you can’t adapt to the user’s behavior YOU are in the wrong.
To avoid this issue, I use a distro that doesn’t give a flying fuck about what the user wants.
That’s the original Linux way: Someone makes a distro in their free time for fun, or for themselves. If it’s useful to others, great. If not, they can go change it, make their own distro or fuck off.
Repeat after me: FREE SOFTWARE ISN’T A PRODUCT. THERE IS NO PROFIT. MARKET SHARE IS IRRELEVANT.
respectful counterpoint: marketshare is important, especially if we want to get more users to use ethical softwares instead of corporate controlled proprietary messes.
that doesn’t mean this particular issue needs to adapt to a Windows-style approach (and in fact it already can with flatpakref files, AppImages, etc.), but dismissing accessibility to people unfamiliar with Linux or dismissing having a goal of increasing Linux usage is harmful to the longevity of desktop Linux in society, and harmful to the goal of competing with the monopolistic, proprietary platforms that currently dominate.
There’s distros aimed at newbies. Maybe these distros should ship with a small, quick, idiot-proof tutorial saying (with fancy images too) “hey don’t do this, do this instead” “if you need to do this you can do so like this” and some common troubleshooting but you’d still have some folks who refuse to listen and do something that breaks their system. And we as a community should only tell noobs to use one or two distros like Linux Mint, at most a few other options in case someone needs something more specific. But aside from these distros not every distro should aim for larger marketshares, in fact some are probably better left with low marketshares (for desktop users anyways).
Also, it is impossible to have a system that doesn’t have problems at some point and users shouldn’t expect to not run into issues and they should be willing to at least try and look up a solution, and this doesn’t go just for Linux. The closest to an unbreakable system that I can think of is Debian where the only thing someone uses is Firefox to navigate the safe sites, possibly with uBlock Origin on and the browser is in a flatpak or contained in some way. If someone doesn’t want to learn at least the basics of how to use a computer and how to try to fix your problems they probably shouldn’t be using computers honestly.
Of course there’s issues that aren’t easy to resolve and that’s what forums and IT technicians are for too.
Ubuntu maybe, but Linux ain’t a product. Most Linux distros aren’t there to make a profit, they’re there because someone thought they’d be useful. They don’t care about markets hare or anything like that.
If you put the faults of Ubuntu on all of Linux then you don’t know much about Linux at all.
If Ubuntu does stupid shit, let it fail who cares there’s a billions distros to choose that provide a better experience than Ubuntu, and certainly better than Windows and macOS
this software isn’t available in the selection that Fedora/Ubuntu/Mint/whatever
My man, those repos are vast as shit. The only time you will run into this situation is either if you’re using obscure software (that most newbies won’t use, and then again if you can’t Google a few things you shouldn’t be using obscure software) or stuff that isn’t supported on linux at all.
limiting user choice
We aren’t limiting user’s choice. You can do literally everything you want on Linux, just need to know how. You need to know how to do stuff in other OSes too btw, but doesn’t mean they will let you do everything.
Those repos are nowhere near vast as shit. It’s trivial to find software that isn’t one or more of them, and quite often what is there isn’t remotely a recent version.
Removing the ability to install .debs is literally limiting user choice and walling things off so the user doesn’t hurt themselves, the same shit that every fucking Linux knob has been squealing about Windows and MacOS doing for decades.
This shows to me that you either didn’t use Linux a lot or don’t understand it.
quite often what is there isn’t remotely a recent version.
That is cause you’re using a stable release distro. If you wanted up to date packages you wouldn’t use something based on Debian stable but either a rolling release or semi-rolling like Fedora. Or Flatpaks, appimages, and the many other options you have. Again, not hard stuff to figure out if you are willing to learn. User’s fault.
Removing the ability to install .debs
Nobody is doing that, except maybe Ubuntu, you just need to learn how to do it. And if your distro does it, well wouldn’t you know it there 100000 distros more you can choose. Again if you’re looking for .debs first of all you’re not getting something different than what you’re getting on the official repo, and secondly you’re almost certainly looking for software that is lesser known or has bad support for Linux. In 2023 almost everything someone needs is in the repos of distros like Mint and Debian. Certainly everything for the type of user that is too lazy to Google anything.
I think you’re mixing up “You shouldn’t do this” with “you shouldn’t be able to do this”. The former is common in Linux, the latter is not. No one is advocating for the latter.
I like finally seeing someone sane in a Linux sub. Am I dreaming? I love Linux but I hate how unapologetically elitist and blind the fanbase is regarding the egregious user-unfriendliness.
“But it works for me!!” - Yeah, Bob, you just spent 25 hours troubleshooting your network drivers and recompiling their kernel module.
“Just choose the distro you want!!!” - Yeah, Alice, you just spent 5 hours researching the various distributions available.
“I never had any problems!!” - Yeah, Kaitleiynn, you have the exact hardware configuration and OS combo that works perfectly.
No, it’s a user problem on both OS’s.
Installing random shit from untrustworthy sources is a much more likely source of infection that a zero-day, network-based exploit, etc
Not every OS allows you to simply click on a random installer/eventually (maybe enter a password) and get owned.
IOS on phones doesn’t.
Android requires you enable untrusted sources.
It sounds like not including a GUI app by default to click-install random packages (outside the package manager) is the extra step for various Linux distros. That’s not a problem, that’s a good idea.
Github is untrustworthy, anyone can put anything on there. It is up to the end user to determine if a project is safe to use or not.
The default repos for Debain on the other hand are filled only with software that has been checked by at least one competent person, making them inherently safe.
No kidding. Open source software is safe because it can come from a trusted source that can be checked by others. Not every open source project is checked but the default repos of Debian, for example, are checked and can be trusted.
All closed source software, on the other hand, is untrustworthy because it can never be checked. This goes for the iOS and Android ecosystems as well. Despite their walled gardens the software is not open and can not be checked, which is why malicious software keeps making it’s way onto phones.
Have you ever heard of malicious code in the Debian repos?
The “inferior way” being precisely the kind of walled garden Linux apologist types typically shit their pants and smear in on their faces about. But it’s fine because it’s UBUNTU’s walled garden! Can’t be using anything Ubuntu doesn’t allow!
A dozen incompatible distribution standards, with shit not even compiled for most of them, relying on the distro for updates that can run several versions behind because the newest version isn’t compatible with THEIR ecosystem…
But App Store bad. Windows Store bad. Play Store bad.
A walled garden doesn’t offer you the freedom to leave it. If you’re unhappy with Ubuntu, you can use a bajillion other distros and get the same software elsewhere. If you preserve your home directory and distro hop then nothing changes for you and your preferences/dot files carry over. I jumped between three distros at some point and my custom GNOME setup (extensions and all) survived through it with minor changes. Heck. Even Thunderbird kept my profile active and I never had to re-add all my email credentials from scratch.
You sound like Slackware is the distro for you. There’s no walled garden. In fact there isn’t a garden at all, you go out into the wilderness and forage, but first you have to learn how to make the plants edible.
The issue was that those users didn’t understand what they were doing and managed to mess up their systems. If you know what you’re doing then installing debs like regular could be totally fine.
You mean their decision to allow GUI installs of debs or what do you mean? The problem was the easy install and since they can’t control what is installed, the people I mentioned just installed whatever random shit not even made for the distro in question. It was a mess.
You act like problems don’t happen on windows and macOS. But they do happen, and they’re harder to fix than on linux most of the time.
Then again, with immutable distros, Debian, Linux Mint, and others, most of the time if something doesn’t work it is because the user did something to break their system and in those cases put effort into it.
If you are a user that only uses the computer to browse the web, maybe play some games on steam, then you’re unlikely to encounter any issues provided you chose the right distro (Mint would be my recommendation but I hear Fedora Silverblue works nicely). If you’re the kind of user to tinker a lot then you’re likely not a noob and you have no excuse for not looking up what you’re doing.
If you aren’t willing to learn at least the basics of how to do the stuff you want to do then probably you shouldn’t do that stuff, not blame the system for doing what you told it to do.
Yeah. Windows or MacOS if you actually want to do shit.
EDIT
Just wanted to mention, I’ve never had an issue with Windows or MacOS that wasn’t directly caused by my own personal fuckery. Somehow though, I’ve had multiple Linux distro installs decide to hose themselves because they didn’t update through the precious fucking package manager properly. You know, the thing that everyone is now shitting on users for not using?
The most fun one was whenever a Debian update decided that the right thing to do was move my primary drive into a subfolder in /etc. Yeah. That fucking happened.
So you’re complaining that your system breaks because you’re trying to use it as something that it isn’t, without looking up what you’re doing, and somehow that’s not your fault?
If you try to use a fork as an outlet cleaner don’t complain that the outlet sucks when you’re getting electrocuted.
Double clicking an OS native package should just open an installer. GDebi has been available for ages and it just works. This dpkg bullshit is exactly what Canonical wants you to do, make it annoying enough to install debs that anyone trying to do any business moves to snaps because they’re raiser for their end users.
It’s not hard to fix (just install one of the many .deb GUI handlers, preferably one that integrates well with your DE) but having to do this in the first place is stupid.
Try command line?
That’s likely an app just not installed by default for GUI
Correct, but new users don’t want to need the command line for something as simple as installing packages.
New users probably shouldn’t be installing .debs, especially if they don’t know about terminal commands. I’ve seen so many fucked up systems from people treating Linux as Windows, as in installing everything by searching for stuff on their browser, downloading an installer and installing that.
Problem is a lot of closed source software still release their software as .deb or .rpm packages that installs their repos so you can install their software from the software centre.
If you tell new users they shouldn’t be installing Discord the way Discord tells them to, you’re only sending them back to Windows.
Most damage I’ve seen comes from PPAs and other repositories, indivual deb files usually come from proprietary software that’ll package all of its shitty proprietary dependencies.
Tell them to install via flatpak. Spotify, Discord and so on should be available as flatpak via Gnome Software or the KDE software center. NOW on Ubuntu, this is anyone’s guess. I’m guessing there is no flatpak support by default. Ubuntu is doing the linux community a disservice.
I’m telling them that because it is a poor idea. But preferably the system should fix user mistake and behind the scenes just install Discord from repo or flatpak, with option to bypass this behaviour for those who know what they’re doing.
Preferably these software vendors would know to guide users towards proper ways of installing stuff, but that’s not happening.
In other words, you’ve seen fucked up systems because people treat their Linux system like literally every non-Linux system they’ve used.
Which is a Linux problem, not a user problem.
“not being exactly like Windows” isn’t a problem at all.
Also, absolutely everyone is familiar with systems that use a central app repository instead of downloading executables with a browser, on their phone.
“Oh look, this software isn’t available in the selection that Fedora/Ubuntu/Mint/whatever decided I should have. I guess I can’t install it despite the fact that there are compatible packages for my distro.”
Yeah right. Walled garden horseshit. Linux apologists do anything they can to move goalposts, to the point where using it is fucking impossible if you actually listen to every asshole’s personal opinion.
If you can’t adapt to the user’s behavior YOU are in the wrong. End of fucking story.
And seriously, you’re using an app store to illustrate why limiting user choice is good. What the actual fuck are you doing on a Linux sub anyway?
To avoid this issue, I use a distro that doesn’t give a flying fuck about what the user wants.
That’s the original Linux way: Someone makes a distro in their free time for fun, or for themselves. If it’s useful to others, great. If not, they can go change it, make their own distro or fuck off.
Repeat after me: FREE SOFTWARE ISN’T A PRODUCT. THERE IS NO PROFIT. MARKET SHARE IS IRRELEVANT.
So keep using Windows. Nobody cares.
respectful counterpoint: marketshare is important, especially if we want to get more users to use ethical softwares instead of corporate controlled proprietary messes.
that doesn’t mean this particular issue needs to adapt to a Windows-style approach (and in fact it already can with flatpakref files, AppImages, etc.), but dismissing accessibility to people unfamiliar with Linux or dismissing having a goal of increasing Linux usage is harmful to the longevity of desktop Linux in society, and harmful to the goal of competing with the monopolistic, proprietary platforms that currently dominate.
There’s distros aimed at newbies. Maybe these distros should ship with a small, quick, idiot-proof tutorial saying (with fancy images too) “hey don’t do this, do this instead” “if you need to do this you can do so like this” and some common troubleshooting but you’d still have some folks who refuse to listen and do something that breaks their system. And we as a community should only tell noobs to use one or two distros like Linux Mint, at most a few other options in case someone needs something more specific. But aside from these distros not every distro should aim for larger marketshares, in fact some are probably better left with low marketshares (for desktop users anyways).
Also, it is impossible to have a system that doesn’t have problems at some point and users shouldn’t expect to not run into issues and they should be willing to at least try and look up a solution, and this doesn’t go just for Linux. The closest to an unbreakable system that I can think of is Debian where the only thing someone uses is Firefox to navigate the safe sites, possibly with uBlock Origin on and the browser is in a flatpak or contained in some way. If someone doesn’t want to learn at least the basics of how to use a computer and how to try to fix your problems they probably shouldn’t be using computers honestly.
Of course there’s issues that aren’t easy to resolve and that’s what forums and IT technicians are for too.
UBUNTU IS A PRODUCT. IT MAKES PROFIT. MARKET SHARE IS HOW THEY MAKE MONEY FOR DEVELOPMENT.
Or did you not even bother reading the fucking headline?
Or were you too busy moving the goalposts to even do that?
Ubuntu maybe, but Linux ain’t a product. Most Linux distros aren’t there to make a profit, they’re there because someone thought they’d be useful. They don’t care about markets hare or anything like that.
If you put the faults of Ubuntu on all of Linux then you don’t know much about Linux at all.
If Ubuntu does stupid shit, let it fail who cares there’s a billions distros to choose that provide a better experience than Ubuntu, and certainly better than Windows and macOS
My man, those repos are vast as shit. The only time you will run into this situation is either if you’re using obscure software (that most newbies won’t use, and then again if you can’t Google a few things you shouldn’t be using obscure software) or stuff that isn’t supported on linux at all.
We aren’t limiting user’s choice. You can do literally everything you want on Linux, just need to know how. You need to know how to do stuff in other OSes too btw, but doesn’t mean they will let you do everything.
Those repos are nowhere near vast as shit. It’s trivial to find software that isn’t one or more of them, and quite often what is there isn’t remotely a recent version.
Removing the ability to install .debs is literally limiting user choice and walling things off so the user doesn’t hurt themselves, the same shit that every fucking Linux knob has been squealing about Windows and MacOS doing for decades.
This shows to me that you either didn’t use Linux a lot or don’t understand it.
That is cause you’re using a stable release distro. If you wanted up to date packages you wouldn’t use something based on Debian stable but either a rolling release or semi-rolling like Fedora. Or Flatpaks, appimages, and the many other options you have. Again, not hard stuff to figure out if you are willing to learn. User’s fault.
Nobody is doing that, except maybe Ubuntu, you just need to learn how to do it. And if your distro does it, well wouldn’t you know it there 100000 distros more you can choose. Again if you’re looking for .debs first of all you’re not getting something different than what you’re getting on the official repo, and secondly you’re almost certainly looking for software that is lesser known or has bad support for Linux. In 2023 almost everything someone needs is in the repos of distros like Mint and Debian. Certainly everything for the type of user that is too lazy to Google anything.
Flatpaks
I think you’re mixing up “You shouldn’t do this” with “you shouldn’t be able to do this”. The former is common in Linux, the latter is not. No one is advocating for the latter.
Unless you’re Ubuntu, apparently.
Ubuntu doesn’t hinder you installing DEB packages, it just hinders you to do so if you’re an idiot.
I like finally seeing someone sane in a Linux sub. Am I dreaming? I love Linux but I hate how unapologetically elitist and blind the fanbase is regarding the egregious user-unfriendliness.
“But it works for me!!” - Yeah, Bob, you just spent 25 hours troubleshooting your network drivers and recompiling their kernel module.
“Just choose the distro you want!!!” - Yeah, Alice, you just spent 5 hours researching the various distributions available.
“I never had any problems!!” - Yeah, Kaitleiynn, you have the exact hardware configuration and OS combo that works perfectly.
Hahah not a Linux problem at all
No, it’s a user problem on both OS’s. Installing random shit from untrustworthy sources is a much more likely source of infection that a zero-day, network-based exploit, etc
Not every OS allows you to simply click on a random installer/eventually (maybe enter a password) and get owned. IOS on phones doesn’t. Android requires you enable untrusted sources.
It sounds like not including a GUI app by default to click-install random packages (outside the package manager) is the extra step for various Linux distros. That’s not a problem, that’s a good idea.
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Github is untrustworthy, anyone can put anything on there. It is up to the end user to determine if a project is safe to use or not.
The default repos for Debain on the other hand are filled only with software that has been checked by at least one competent person, making them inherently safe.
But I thought the open nature of open source meant it was safe because someone has checked all code everywhere!
This shit has become tedious.
No kidding. Open source software is safe because it can come from a trusted source that can be checked by others. Not every open source project is checked but the default repos of Debian, for example, are checked and can be trusted.
All closed source software, on the other hand, is untrustworthy because it can never be checked. This goes for the iOS and Android ecosystems as well. Despite their walled gardens the software is not open and can not be checked, which is why malicious software keeps making it’s way onto phones.
Have you ever heard of malicious code in the Debian repos?
It always was tedious to use computers, people just get a lot of stuff abstracted away by millions of hours of manpower.
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Was it ever trustworthy? What made you think that?
It’s hardly a Linux problem that other OSs have done things in an inferior way.
The “inferior way” being precisely the kind of walled garden Linux apologist types typically shit their pants and smear in on their faces about. But it’s fine because it’s UBUNTU’s walled garden! Can’t be using anything Ubuntu doesn’t allow!
A dozen incompatible distribution standards, with shit not even compiled for most of them, relying on the distro for updates that can run several versions behind because the newest version isn’t compatible with THEIR ecosystem…
But App Store bad. Windows Store bad. Play Store bad.
Piss on that hypocrisy.
A walled garden doesn’t offer you the freedom to leave it. If you’re unhappy with Ubuntu, you can use a bajillion other distros and get the same software elsewhere. If you preserve your home directory and distro hop then nothing changes for you and your preferences/dot files carry over. I jumped between three distros at some point and my custom GNOME setup (extensions and all) survived through it with minor changes. Heck. Even Thunderbird kept my profile active and I never had to re-add all my email credentials from scratch.
Can you do that with Windows or MacOS?
Yes, I can in fact download programs that aren’t on the Windows or Mac app stores. Are you even paying attention here?
But you can’t completely switch your system with a different version managed by different people while preserving your home folder.
You can’t choose the windows you get, Microsoft chooses for you
You sound like Slackware is the distro for you. There’s no walled garden. In fact there isn’t a garden at all, you go out into the wilderness and forage, but first you have to learn how to make the plants edible.
The issue was that those users didn’t understand what they were doing and managed to mess up their systems. If you know what you’re doing then installing debs like regular could be totally fine.
Well it was the users who had a problem with their systems being messed up
Yes, by the shit-tier decisions of the distro developers.
You mean their decision to allow GUI installs of debs or what do you mean? The problem was the easy install and since they can’t control what is installed, the people I mentioned just installed whatever random shit not even made for the distro in question. It was a mess.
No it is not a system issue. User made an assumption and got a slap as this is not windows.
Something that worked last week now does not work.
System issue. Suck less shit at systems and maybe people in general would give a shit about Linux.
You act like problems don’t happen on windows and macOS. But they do happen, and they’re harder to fix than on linux most of the time.
Then again, with immutable distros, Debian, Linux Mint, and others, most of the time if something doesn’t work it is because the user did something to break their system and in those cases put effort into it.
If you are a user that only uses the computer to browse the web, maybe play some games on steam, then you’re unlikely to encounter any issues provided you chose the right distro (Mint would be my recommendation but I hear Fedora Silverblue works nicely). If you’re the kind of user to tinker a lot then you’re likely not a noob and you have no excuse for not looking up what you’re doing.
If you aren’t willing to learn at least the basics of how to do the stuff you want to do then probably you shouldn’t do that stuff, not blame the system for doing what you told it to do.
“Provided you choose the right distro.”
Yeah. Windows or MacOS if you actually want to do shit.
EDIT
Just wanted to mention, I’ve never had an issue with Windows or MacOS that wasn’t directly caused by my own personal fuckery. Somehow though, I’ve had multiple Linux distro installs decide to hose themselves because they didn’t update through the precious fucking package manager properly. You know, the thing that everyone is now shitting on users for not using?
The most fun one was whenever a Debian update decided that the right thing to do was move my primary drive into a subfolder in /etc. Yeah. That fucking happened.
So you’re complaining that your system breaks because you’re trying to use it as something that it isn’t, without looking up what you’re doing, and somehow that’s not your fault?
If you try to use a fork as an outlet cleaner don’t complain that the outlet sucks when you’re getting electrocuted.
Thats also possible with appstream. But unless the repos go and people just install flatpaks, stuff like this will happen.
Double clicking an OS native package should just open an installer. GDebi has been available for ages and it just works. This dpkg bullshit is exactly what Canonical wants you to do, make it annoying enough to install debs that anyone trying to do any business moves to snaps because they’re raiser for their end users.
It’s not hard to fix (just install one of the many .deb GUI handlers, preferably one that integrates well with your DE) but having to do this in the first place is stupid.
Add a GUI desktop entry for that, assign .deb file mimetype to it, bam. A usable experience.
Or just install gdebi.
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