A bit of an elitist gatekeeper, are we?
It’s a screenshot of a post by someone that fits that description. The OP here tried to show that but it isn’t clear.
The original post is a perfectly humorous meme on the idea that “maybe enabling users doing things via gui isn’t a horrible idea”.
Posting a screenshot of someone else’s post, with a clearly negative note, in hopes of provoking… What? A hateful echo chamber around it?
There’s nothing funny here. It essentially just boils down to “look at how dumb this reasonable opinion exaggerated for comedic effect is” which is little more than toxic slander looking for validation.
I too consume my memes with a pinky out
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Are you suggesting that the original meme’s depiction of software shipped in a tarball being a retarded way of doing it, is actually serious, rather than hyperbolic?
There is nothing wrong with using a downloaded file to install software. What the OP on reddit was trying to do is depict this method as retarded. For me, installing packages thorugh a GUI is retarded, but I didn’t make a similar meme that depicts the opposite.
You want to install things through a GUI, fine, that’s your choice. Just don’t say that using a downloaded file and using the terminal to do the same is retarded.
Flatpacks/Snaps/AppImages are retarded for me as well, especially since you can compile most things to run natively, but I don’t bitch about it. People use them, and that’s fine, it’s their choice.
Of course there isn’t. Look up the definition of hyperbole.
If you had made a meme depicting the opposite, it would have gone over better because then it could at least be interpreted as a sarcastic jab at the type of gatekeepers that give the linux community a bad name.
The original meme isn’t “bitching about it”, it’s poking fun at the type of tunnel visioned elitists that exist among linux users who genuinely think that everyone knowing how to use the terminal is a reasonable ask. As if accessible GUIs are a threat to those us who know how to make use of CLI applications.
That you admit that you DO think the “other” side of this conversation is retarded, is telling, because it shows you see a divide where there shouldn’t be one.
The original meme isn’t “bitching about it”, it’s poking fun at the type of tunnel visioned elitists that exist among linux users who genuinely think that everyone knowing how to use the terminal is a reasonable ask.
No one said you’d have to be a wiz and write bash scripts left and right, but installing a package you’ve downloaded through the terminal 🤨… I mean, come on, it’s basically one freaking command, it really isn’t that hard.
That you admit that you DO think the “other” side of this conversation is retarded, is telling, because it shows you see a divide where there shouldn’t be one.
It’s not a divide if I don’t make fun of those people or belittle them. I don’t. Everyone has their choice and what works for them, and that’s fine. Just don’t make the other parties that feel more comfortable with the terminal look retarded because we choose to do things differently than you.
But it’s correct. It’s time to move on.
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It’s a meme.
Average redditor who didn’t grow up to understand that opinions exist:
I don’t know whether to upvote or downvote. Congratulations.
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Xctract zee file
xzf
-xf is all you need
Also most file managers handle it easily
I don’t understand.
How is it hard to remember: “eXtract File” = “tar xf …”? If tar is gZipped - it’s “tar xzf …”.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen tarball that wouldn’t work with one of these two commands.Usually the distro has tar in automatic and automatically detects which compression flag to use so
tar xf ...usually just worksYeah it’s many years that I haven’t had to specify z, j etc.
Never encountered a bz2 tar? Then the flag is
j.Just use
tar xafto auto-detect the format. (Mnemonic: “extract a file”)
eXtract Zi Files - xzf
sudo emerge app-misc/i-love-gentoo
Being real, why DON’T distros just have the ability to do the installation if you double-click whatever file is downloaded?
I feel like we should have either option - download and double-click or just use the command line.
I mean, what else would double-clicking a .tar.gz file or an appimage do than install it (yes, I know, look into the archive, but really - how often is that the desired thing to do)? So, therefore, why don’t we just have it install the files that are downloaded?
This is a legit question btw, I really don’t know the answer
Do you not know what a tar.gz is? it’s like a zip file. how are you supposed to install it automatically? the structure inside is unknown.
also, it’s commonly used for things like backups.
How would the distro tell if the tar.gz is a program or just a bunch of compressed files? I tend to use tar files for compression rather than for distributing or installing software
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Yes, but the header of the file says it’s a binary, that is why it gives you the option to run as a program or open as a file. Because the OS knows that you can do either with binaries.
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Some file managers might add the +x automatically if you choose to run the binary through the desktop environment (not the terminal)… or ask you if you’d like to mark the file as an executable (i.e. add +x to permissions).
You can’t do it the same way with tar, what are you gonna execute, tar is neither a script or an ELF binary. It’s like asking for a zip file to be executable, doesn’t make sense. You can change the extension to .exe, but it won’t run, it’s not an exe, no MZ header, nothing 🤷.
Cause .tar.gz is not an executable binary in itself. It is more like a zip of the binary and its support files. Since it would be really difficult to distribute and maintain native binaries for every type of distro, application publishers used to just distribute for distros that has a larger userbase, like a .deb for Debian/Ubuntu and a .rpm for Fedora/RHEL/Suse, and then they would provide a tarball for any other distro. Flatpak and Snap have been introduced to eliminate this overhead from application developers, but they still offer tarballs as the newer solutions are still far from standardization.
I 100% get that (and I know it’s an archive), but I’m just saying why doesn’t double-clicking a .tar.gz just run “tar xf file.tar.gz | sh” on that file? Or check if there’s an executable in the extracted files and then run it if there is, and if it’s just an archive of files then open the extracted folder?
What if I don’t want to install it, even if there is a binary in there? What if I just wanna open the archive and see it’s content?
The OS does the smart thing. The header says it’s an archive, so we treat it as just that, an archive. Commercial OSes like Windows and MacOS are the oddballs out, not Linux. It just interprets the cold hard truth - this is an archive, I have no idea what’s in it, you tell me what to do with it, end of story.
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I mean, what else would double-clicking a .tar.gz file or an appimage do than install it (yes, I know, look into the archive, but really - how often is that the desired thing to do)?
Personally, I open tarballs quite often. Why? Just wanna know what’s inside them.
Double click translating to install on tar.gz is not wise since anything can be packed in a tarball, a gzip archive or a gzipped tarball.
And then you have a similar problem with tar.xz (it’s becoming more and more popular from what I can see). It doesn’t use gzip to compress the archive, it uses LZMA, so you have to use xz instead of gzip to decompress the tarball.
Basically, it boils down to how UNIX used to work. Mind you, back in the day there were no package managers, it was all done with .tar.zip or make install. This really was hell to be honest… keeping track of what app installed what libraries and versions of it… yes it really was a PITA. This is the real reason why package managers were invented (thank god!) and why having only one package manager on a system is the preferred way to handle apps/software. Otherwise, you’ll soon be in dependency hell. Shared libraries are at the core of any UNIX based OS. Yes, Flatpaks/Snaps/AppImages and package managers like nix circumvent this problem, but in no way is the problem gone. It’s still there, we just don’t mess around with it.
So, basically the idea of having an “installer” came quite late into the game. Plus, having to check on all dependencies and making an install script that worked on every single distro out there was just so complicated, that no one would ever want to go through with it. Sure, there are install.sh scripts in some pacakges out there, but they basically check nothig, it’s more or less “copy this here, that there” which of course could be done by hand anyway… and then run the app and pray it has all of the dependencies it needs 😬… which it never does 😂.
A .tar.gz is a regular archive, the file manager shouldn’t assume it’s a program. Also, how do you expect it to work? There’s no general rule for archives. As for appimages, one of their selling points is that you can run them portably, so it shouldn’t install by default, but run. However, a right click install option would be nice.
I personally hate it when software has ‘linux support’ as one out-of-date .deb file and a .tar.gz
Meeh, if you can compile it or make it run on modern day libraries, who cares 🤷.
Ew, what’s that website?
double click exe file
10 page wizard, with malware boxed checked by default
curl pipe bash lol
Right? Some of us like doing
curl | tar xzto download and decompress in a single step, saving time and the hassle of installation
