Re: AutoPortage

It's definitely true that autopackage hasn't become a big success, so
in that sense you can justify trying nearly anything. However I'd go
further and say it's [desktop] Linux as a whole that has not been
successful, and that's probably impossible to change. The only people
using Linux are those who accept or have even decided they prefer
having all their software vetted and provided by a third party, it's
sort of the iPhone AppStore model in extremis.

> As much as I regret saying this, I don't use Autopackage for own software

Well, autopackage isn't really targetted at server software. Most of
the things it provides aren't relevant there, or would just annoy the
technical users who know and like The Unix Way. So that isn't
surprising.

> 1. The Linux hype is long over. The Linux user base is still growing

Actually it's not. User-agents as seen by google.com show Linux being
stagnant at slightly less than 1% of all visits, and that has been
flat over a number of years. Apple is growing slowly and Vista is
growing fastest of all.

Basically, I think desktop Linux is a dead end - it's (barely) adding
enough users to keep up with the general growth of the desktop
computer market. It never managed to grow a commercial developer
ecosystem, which means it's very susceptible to trends and fashion for
survival ..... it seems most developers these days are not excited by
desktop development anymore and prefer to focus on web and mobile
development. Really who can blame them. The platforms are much nicer
to work with, and there are well understood revenue models there.

> 2. I'm noticing that pretty much everybody these days *expects* that
> software is installed through their native package managers. I have to
> conclude that there is no problem as far as most existing Linux users are
> concerned.

I think it's indeed less of a problem than when we started - the
distro market has consolidated a lot lately, there's basically Ubuntu,
Fedora and SuSE with Ubuntu (apparently) vastly in the lead market
share wise. Of course the current setup is still  unworkable for any
developer who actually cares what bits their users run, ie, all
commercial developers, and any open source guys who have a strong
desire for product quality.

Something that interests me currently (as the owner of a new G1 Dev
Phone) is ensuring Android doesn't end up in the same mess with
respect to compatibility and app distribution. It's off to a pretty
good start, although the whole Market concept suffers the same problem
as Synaptic does in terms of crappy UI. But then, the solutions to
that problem are well known and not hard to implement.

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