this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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pacman and nix are both really neat conceptually but they both fail at the most obvious usability test, which is "I just want to install a package"; its like exiting vim all over again.
edit: yes, I know you can set an alias to
pacman -Syor whatever, but if you need to set up an alias for a command to be usable, then I can't in good faith recommend that OS to anyone, and I don't want to use an OS I wouldn't recommend to others.Yeah, I don't understand how you could make installing vim simpler than
pacman -S vim? Is it about "-S" being less obvious than "install"?How about
pacman install vimorpacman --install vimorpacman -i vimWhat the heck does
Smean?! What's all the syncing nonsense. A million obscure parameters that are all single letter, don't tie in with anything meaningful. You might be used to it, but it's a mess of parameters.To me that's part of the ideology I associate with Arch. If you actually use
-hin pacman, I find that the help is presented in a nice and contextual way. You only need a few commands on a daily basis, and most of the other things you might need are easy to figure out when you need them.In regard to
-Sbeing confusing, I think it's basically making the external operations map to how the software works internally. I feel like learning what the software is doing, rather than expecting the software to hide away the details, is also part of it. When you want to do more complex operations, or when something breaks, you'll have a better understanding of what happened.I wouldn't mind a better interface, I'm not claiming it's the best it can be or even close to it, but I wouldn't want the improvement to come at the cost of obscuring how the software works. I don't want the commands categorized just by convenience rather than logic, or magic buttons that automatically perform a sequence of hidden operations. I want something I can learn, understand, commands I can dissect into their components, not something I'm expected to use in the 10 ways provided and hope it does what I need.
I see this in the same way as people tend to use git - some GUIs will offer convenient buttons with their own made up names, and when git throws an unexpected error, the user will have no idea what the error means, or what the software did to get there.
People often complain that git doesn't make sense. They might have a point in terms of it being unintuitive... But I find that with a general understanding how it's built and what the commands do, the complaints are often people trying to force the issue using the wrong tool for the job.
And, honestly, sorry for the rant. In the end it's just my opinion, I don't want to force it on anybody, I just started writing and kept finding things I wanted to elaborate on. If you're reading this, I hope you have a good day!