Ubuntu Networking and Linux Packaging
I think my Macbook / Mac OS X has spoiled me as far as interfaces go. I’ve tried about three times now to mess around with Linux in a dual-boot fashion on the desktop, and each time I find something that frustrates me a little bit. At the moment, I’ve gone back to virtualizing Linux within Windows 7 to mess around with some different distributions. I can’t seem to come to rest on one. I thought I had with Ubuntu, but this latest issue with DNS resolution is driving me nuts. At work, it goes along well and then all of the sudden it takes almost a full minute or two for a DNS address to resolve. I’ve gone through bug reports, tried every workaround mentioned and still no joy. I’m a bit worried I’m going to run into the same sort of situation when using another distribution, so I’m hesitant to try to rebuild the work box.
One thing I really, really like about OS X is the software packaging. For most applications, you download either a .DMG (disk image) or a compressed file, open it and drag the app into your Applications (or other) folder, and you’re off and running. Everything is essentially self-contained, which is nice. I remember a discussion about Linux software distribution and packaging, and someone brought up this point. While it would be nice for Linux, could you imagine having a few copies of GTK being distributed with each application? That being said, GTK could always be installed by default, but that would defeat the purpose of self-contained packages, especially if a piece of software depends on one particular version of GTK (or any other library, for that matter). I don’t foresee any one packaging scheme becoming default across the board, as there’s always going to be a group that feels that their way is the right way and they’re going to do it like they want to. To me, this is Linux’s biggest problem as far as getting commercially supported software developed for it. While there are some companies who are distributing software for Linux (I can think of a couple of games), a majority still remains.
