I'm tired of installing software.

Comment

Comment by James Pakele on April 6, 2011 at 3:51pm

I have a CR48 and am using it increasingly more, especially since the update that helped with the trackpad.  I can completely see Google's vision of the future of computing and I'm loving it.  All my stuff is stored and "manipulated' online, accessible from any computer, regardless of Windows, Linux or Mac.  Web apps are becoming more and more functional.  Only thing is that many of these web apps use Flash, being inaccessible from an iDevice.  Other than that everywhere else.  I recently discovered a web app named Cacoo (in the Google Web Store) that I used to do UI Mockup and I could even get to it from my Motorola Atrix, though the screen was too small to be really functional.  That did, however, sink in that I would definitely buy a tablet that supports Flash.

 

Cool thing is, no installing stuff, and available from everywhere.

Comment by Brian on April 6, 2011 at 3:29pm

@Alex, dang it looks like the Cr-48 pilot is filled, I'm increasingly liking the 'instant on' that mobile/tablet devices provide - desktops have their role but I find that role to be increasingly small for my computing needs. I just don't get excited about fiddling with hardware anymore - I use my devices more as tools than gadgets. Does this mean I'll have to turn in my geek hat soon? :)

 

@John, I do. Auto update was the best feature they've added to the android marketplace. You are right about installation being a very Windows-centric concept. DOS we didn't really install software, we unpacked or unloaded it - and really those were artifacts of the small storage constraints of the time. You could probably convincingly argue that cloud-based on-demand loading/streaming of content is really just the logical end of where compressing data onto small media began.

Comment by Alex G on March 28, 2011 at 12:19am

@Paul, load times and memory usage are two more arguments against statically compiled apps (or "self-contained" as you called them). Apps can actually be self contained and still use dynamically loadable shared libraries.

@Brian, I was going to say that Google has something in store for you, but John beat me to that. Perhaps you should see if they let you try a Cr-48? (http://www.google.com/chromeos/pilot-program.html) I have to tell you, in my mind the "installation" concept seems like a Microsoft invention. I don't know why they call it installation in UNIX when all you're doing is copying files from one directory to another.

Comment by Brian on March 21, 2011 at 4:06pm

Thanks for the comments, this was actually just a little rant I had when trying to install a new version of some GIS software. I felt it was ridiculous that I should have to uninstall the whole package just for a minor release update..

 

Anyway, I'm familiar with how Debian/RedHat and other *nix systems do their package distribution and I agree it's generally a much smoother solution.

 

I don't really have much to add, as I basically agree with everything Paul has contributed to the discussion. I'd like to see apps be self-contained, this is a very sensible solution and would benefit a lot of us.

 

I would just add that (in a suitably designed system), security could actually improve because everything the app needs to write to would be only its own files. So there would be less impact from malware/rootkits.

 

As long as it was not granted admin privileges (which virtually NO apps need despite the plethora of poorly written ones out there) - another thing *nix does better - any vulnerability would be limited to that application and you could simply delete its files and poof - vulnerability gone.

Comment by Paul Graydon on March 21, 2011 at 1:44pm

The idea has been around in the *nix and *bsd community for a while, in various forms.  Part of the problem is lack of standardisation.. or rather the standards are there but companies don't follow it.  Take a dive around the file system and/or registry and you'll see what I mean.

With apt repositories (that you see in Debian and it's variants like Ubuntu) have been kicking around for a good length of time now, but take effort to package and maintain, and it's mostly volunteer effort.  Installing is virtually effortless, all dependencies and initial configuration is done for you.  E.g. you can install Thunderbird in ~2 minutes, possibly less depending on bandwidth and system.

Some others like BSD's ports system (also mac-ports) sit somewhere between the two options, they try to take a lot of the effort out of installing software by scripting as much as possible.  Instead of pre-compiling and packaging up for install, it downloads the entire source code, compiles and installs.  Great for making sure the code is tuned for your environment, bad for install times.

If you do go down the app-store route there comes a whole other debate:  Versioning.  To the average Joe Bloggs that's not much of a problem, they like to upgrade to the latest greatest, but there are always concerns that can be tied into that in unanticipated ways, especially once you get into the realm of dependencies.  Microsoft had an abominable solution in XP and earlier with different versions of DLL (library) files all over the place to avoid dependency conflicts that didn't really work.  They've made progress on that in 7 but it's still not perfect.  The same problem hounds most OSs.

 

By way of an attempted solution what happens with most *nix software repositories is they draw a line in the sand and say "These are the versions in our distribution".  All other software that makes it into the repository has to be compiled against them (converted from programming code into an executable), to ensure consistency, compatibility, and stability.

The flipside is that those applications can't be upgraded until the next release, unless you DIY in which case you're back to the realms of the awful install process.  Ask experienced python programmers how much they love RedHat ;)

 

These days I'm inclined to think we ought to go back to the idea of every application being self-contained.  There are two main historical arguments against it.  1) Disk space, 2) Security.   Number 1 is pretty much negligible these days.  Storage is cheap, and getting cheaper.  Number 2 is still a risk, if a vulnerability is identified in a library, you've got to go find it in every single location it might be installed and update it.  Tricky business.  That said I'm inclined to think the benefits of an App repository far outweigh the risk there.  If something is popping up and telling people there is a new version of the software or a patched version, they'd be much more likely to install it.

Comment by Marcus Sortijas on March 20, 2011 at 11:04pm

This is actually one of the big reasons I like using Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system.  If you want a new program, you just go into the Software Center.  Search, check out the description, hit "Install."  Done. 

 

It's basically an App Store for desktop software.  Did I also mention that it's free? :)

Comment by Mika Leuck on March 20, 2011 at 1:04pm

So am I! It should all be self contained and easily pulled App Store-like.

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