> you cant just go and download a precompiled blob from a website and run it everywhere, like you can with macOS and Windows.
Sure you can! It's called AppImage or Flatpak or Snap!
I'm also not sure why compiling is treated as some taboo? It's not like Windows where it's actually impossible to set up a toolchain. Your distro comes with one installed! So that means you can run a single installer file, just like in Windows, except this is a shell script or anything else—and it can just compile and link everything for you, quite easily! The user doesn't have to know or understand how this works at all.
Why is that bad? It's bad to run binary blobs...! It's good to tailor your software to your specific environment and hardware!
they don't run without a runtime, and that runtime is backed by glibc, they just moved the issue one more layer.
Virtually all software for the desktop is compiled once and then shipped to users and they never see the source.
This works for Windows and macOS because their ABI allows it.
For Linux you have to target each and every distro like a whole OS and keep up with it or your app won't run anymore after a few years.
This is also the reason why Linux has package managers and windows didn't have a official one for nearly 40 years. So its not all bad.
It's the same problem, just spread out to different layers...Windows had DLL hell too, and then eventually everyone just packaged all of their required versions of DLLs and redistributables into their MSI.
What about Linux do you think changes so much? Everything still speaks X11 or PulseAudio on desktop. More broadly, the standard library is...the standard library? What's the specific issue?
I kinda see this as a usability issue. If the app developer is willing to wrap the whole “download source and then compile” with a one click installation shield type software, most users would be fine.
But yeah then they need to track distros and such. I hope there are a couple of distros that have better back compatibility eventually.
I've definitely used STA and AP modes concurrently on my Windows laptop with the operating system's built-in internet connection sharing function to help troubleshoot a problem in the field.
That was around a decade ago. It didn't take any extra effort on my part; I just told it to do the thing, and then it did that thing.
Researched this for a bit: there is some hardware for PCI supporting it, but Windows 10/11 not, and Linux is still work in progress, so no real support on OS level, only for some iOS/Android devices.
it might be interesting to use unused or extra wifi cards to support this. My pc motherboard has both wifi and ethernet and I only use the ethernet. That card does absolutely nothing at all.
There is an open standard for that which is included in Apple devices since the iPhone 15. google implements it since the pixel 3. It’s called NAN. There are no WiFi cards available for consumers to buy which expose that as part of their firmware sadly. But wpa_supplicant has implemented part of the standard.
Surely the browser could enforce a limit on a domain, and make sure that the real page you came from (typically the search engine) is prominently displayed.
In the python eco system you can just replace CUDA with DirectML in at least one popular framework and it just runs. You are limited to windows then though.
Have gone back to Linux after 23 years, Ive only had to go to the console once to make all hardware of my framework 12 work since i chose to use a non supported distro.
That's definitely a breath of fresh air compared to the old times, where getting wifi to work was a major hassle, anyone remember ndiswrapper? ouch.
As I understand it, ish implements x86 instructions and Linux syscalls as functions and translates running programs into arrays of calls to these functions, so all the machine code that will ever run is included in the app bundle, which at least satisfies the rules iOS enforces at runtime.
As for the rules as written, I suppose you could make reasonable arguments either way.
you cant just go and download a precompiled blob from a website and run it everywhere, like you can with macOS and Windows.
glibc only targets one audience, one which can recompile its apps when needed.
What linux badly needs is a stable ABI for Userspace Apps, and Win32 is just that sadly.
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