[GoLUG] [GTALUG] Status of Debian and derivatives, or flatpak/appimage/snap discussion redux

[Barry Fishman]

On 2025-11-29 15:32:08 -08, Kyle Terrien wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2025 at 02:17:03PM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
>> Nick Accad via Talk said on Fri, 28 Nov 2025 12:53:06 -0500
>> >The immediate solution for me is to use flatpaks. 
>> 
>> Flatpaks are no more a solution than putting a penny in the fusebox to
>> prevent fuse blowing, putting coins on the tonearm of an audio
>> turntable to prevent the needle from skipping, or "fixing" a roof leak
>> by placing a bucket under the leak. When the symptom rather than the
>> root cause is addressed, there are always unpleasant side effects (the
>> house burning down, the vinyl records wearing out faster, or the wood
>> under the leak rotting into pulp).
>
> The situation is unsustainable.  Rampant tribalism has carved the
> “community” into little pieces.  (“My distro/package manager is better
> than yours!”)

What we have now is not tribalism, its feudalism.

We started out as individual tinkerers, developing and collecting
software to meet our needs or just enjoying building software (and
sometimes hardware) that we liked.

We found people with common interests and formed user groups where we
could share ideas.  We formed our own tribes of people with common
interest so we could share our ideas and software.  Other formed
different tribes based on different ideas of how to build systems,
and that was fine.  One could gain insight from people who looked at
things differently and sometimes appropriate some of there ideas into
our own systems to make them better.

Like some people wanted tiling window managers and some liked individual
windows that they could size as they like and even overlap them.  They
may have had their own tribe of supporters and sub-tribe build on
individual implementations.

We may have picked a tribe and promoted its virtues, but still concerned
ourselves with window systems like X11 which could work with both, and
application toolkits that were not restricted to one or the other.

With time these environments became very good, and companies (thru
employees that used them) discovered that the systems worked well in
their business environments and were a lot cheaper to use.  They just
lacked a support mechanism.  Ah -- a market opportunity!

But industrial markets require uniformity of products and control of the
labor force.  This takes time to develop.  Especially when a different
market of criminals who figured out ways of breaking into these
commercial systems and extracting money was developing.

With time we developed toward a market controlled by a few large "Linux
providers."  They competed in the commercial market for "market share".
They balanced the advantages of "Open Source" which allowed them to take
the work of the developer community and not pay them for it (or pay them
very little and give them no benefits) against source ownership.

They joined in the large development groups like Linux, Gnome, and KDE,
and influenced their direction by promoting less flexibility so they
were easier to maintain, and more security so the were usable on
corporate networks that had more users and depended more on internet
visible resources that were subject to attack.

They also promoted turning a individual freedom oriented developer
community into a more Feudal one where a larger group of less
independent minded people (serfs) would commit themselves to (and
promote) their products.

Now we seem to be going into a postmodern society modeled on magical
ideas like AI and extremely wealthy feudal lords now cast as great
entrepreneurs -- ending the Enlightenment with its ideas of democracy,
science, and egalitarianism, true individual freedom.

-- 
Barry Fishman