Re: Debian and our frenemies of containers and userland repos
On Thu, 2019-07-11 at 23:25 +0800, Yao Wei wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Following to Mo Zhou's thread of Conda and Debian, it reminds me
> that,
> could Debian reduced into a "proof of concept" as an operating system
> with collection of apps and things composed of completely free
> software,
> as more and more software repositories are moving away from the free
> software repositories like Debian, and userland repositories and app
> containers becomes more prominent and easier to access. I feel the
> fear
> when I was in a flatpak session in DebConf17.
>
> It can be a "solid base" of container images and barebone systems,
> but
> the days are numbered as operating systems as free and focused on its
> mission (like Google COOS, Yocto, Alpine etc.) is evolving steady.
>
> Could it be a disaster for us? And more importantly, do users care?
>
> Best regards,
> Yao Wei
I think that there will always be some demand for APT-style packages as
opposed to containers. I know that I personally am a lot more likely to
use software if I can get it from apt-get than if I have to download a
Docker image.
I have also seen this first-hand from other people. Since we launched
our Ubuntu CMake APT repository earlier this year, it has become
massively popular. It is regularly getting hundreds of downloads per
week, both from people inside our company and from external users. I
suspect it is only going to get bigger over time, especially with our
next release cycle. I get emails about it almost every day.
The demand is there. APT-style repositories aren't going away any time
soon.
Kyle
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