Package manager vs Software manager

Ugh. Okay, some of things you are saying are just incorrect (linuxforall's absurd responses notwithstanding).

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

The junk in Linux comes in other form: dynamic libraries/packages dependency. It's very ugly and it's like the old "DLL Hell" problem that got solved in Windows at the start of this century.

This is what package managers are for. They have dependency resolution so that you don't have to worry about installing each and every shared library. The "dependency hell" thing doesn't really come into play until you start compiling stuff (at which point package management makes it a great deal easier to handle than on Windows).

Linux uses per-user config files, which can also accumulate in different user accounts over time because there are no available tools to reliably clean them.

Just like the stuff in your Application Data directory, or in the HKU part of the registry? That's also per-user config data. In either case it has no performance impact (other than on the Indexing Service or updatedb).

And there are tools to reliably clean up dotfiles. They're called 'mv' and 'rm'. Dotfiles are ordinary text files, so you can back them up and remove them if they're giving you problems (e.g. an old configuration file causing settings issues in a new program version, which I've also seen in badly designed Windows programs BTW).

Now, on Windows, there are several options of registry cleaners being continually developed to reliably detect and remove registry junk, with options of doing automatic backups as well.

Which aren't actually needed, since the registry is maybe a few hundred KB and "registry junk" does not have a significant performance impact.

And, in recent versions, Windows goes even further: it tries to create virtual versions of the registry for new apps, in an attempt to eliminate registry junk before it gets created. Point for Windows.

UAC virtualization is not an anti-junk measure, it's a compatibility measure - so that badly designed programs from WinXP, that used to require admin privileges, can now be run as limited user on Vista and 7.

(Which is really cool in my book, since programs grotesquely violating the principle of least privilege is an old Windows problem, and this is Microsoft trying to work around that.)

Secondly, there aren't many options of portable apps for Linux. On Windows, if one is radical and wants to use only portable apps, he can - there are portable alternatives for everything and even very complex software like commercial game titles can easily get a portable version with the help of software like VMWare ThinApp and others. Again, point for Windows.

Okay, you're right on that one - portable apps and Linux do not really mix. But I still think you should know more about Linux (and Windows) before you start making comparisons.

[Hungry Man]

Firstly, Linux doesn't have a registry so of course there is no registry nonsense in it. The junk in Linux comes in other form: dynamic libraries/packages dependency. It's very ugly and it's like the old "DLL Hell" problem that got solved in Windows at the start of this century.

lmao uh what? You can sudo apt-get remove a package and all of the dependencies will be tracked and removed, which is why you'll see a few packages like "libxyz.so" removed.

Linux uses per-user config files, which can also accumulate in different user accounts over time because there are no available tools to reliably clean them.

apt-get purge removes these and we're talking MB of data over numerous packages, just as silly as "registry clutter"

Now, on Windows, there are several options of registry cleaners being continually developed to reliably detect and remove registry junk, with options of doing automatic backups as well.

And 9 times out of 10 they're crapware and also offer to 'defrag' your registry or they'll remove things that don't need to be removed because, again, registry clutter is a silly idea. And if we're giving points away... the native "purge" function does this already.

And, in recent versions, Windows goes even further: it tries to create virtual versions of the registry for new apps, in an attempt to eliminate registry junk before it gets created.

No, it doesn't. It virtualizes an area of the registry for compatibility reasons. This doesn't change anything clutter-wise as either way you've got a hive being accessed.

Secondly, there aren't many options of portable apps for Linux. On Windows, if one is radical and wants to use only portable apps, he can - there are portable alternatives for everything and even very complex software like commercial game titles can easily get a portable version with the help of software like VMWare ThinApp and others. Again, point for Windows.

I guess? Like... super haha yes, software availability on Linux is absolutely worse. This is not a design issue, you can just as easily have portable apps on either. So uh... point to Windows that everyone has known about since day 1.

[linuxforall]

The fact that one can run an entire functional linux distro with office, media player etc. right from an USB negates the need for portable apps, no wonder banks hand out unsafe Linux distros to their customers for safer online banking.

[Wild Hunter]

Registry Virtualization basically means that applications are prevented from writing to System Folders in Windows' file system and ALSO to the ‘machine wide keys’ in the registry. Of course it's not primarily an anti-junk measure, but it has secondary effects to this direction as well. When applications are prevented from writing to to the ‘machine wide keys’ in the registry, much less residual registry junk is accumulated as a direct result.

[Wild Hunter]

Originally Posted by linuxforall

The fact that one can run an entire functional linux distro with office, media player etc. right from an USB negates the need for portable apps, no wonder banks hand out unsafe Linux distros to their customers for safer online banking.

No it doesn't, 2 different things.

[Wild Hunter]

Originally Posted by Hungry Man

apt-get purge removes these and we're talking MB of data over numerous packages, just as silly as "registry clutter"

apt-get purge only works if the databases aren't stored in a non-intuitive location.

[Wild Hunter]

Originally Posted by Hungry Man

and also offer to 'defrag' your registry

Which is a good idea in some scenarios. Imagine a very cluttered registry (a years-old Windows installation of a teenager). A good registry cleaner can do the job of fixing the many errors this registry likely has. But after fixing the errors, gaps are left behind and the registry becomes large, fragmented and inefficient. Further, because the registry is loaded into RAM, the bloat also eats up memory. That's where tools that reliably defrag registry come handy.

[linuxforall]

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

No it doesn't, 2 different things.

Not really, we are looking for a portable functional app, it carries all that but of course, in your case nothing can ever come out of Linux, whatcha doin in a Linux forum anyways

[Wild Hunter]

Originally Posted by linuxforall

Not really, we are looking for a portable functional app, it carries all that but of course, in your case nothing can ever come out of Linux, whatcha doin in a Linux forum anyways

Nop.. One thing is an entire portable OS with some built-in apps that can hardly be modified on the go such as what you are talking about (a "Live Linux Distro"). Another thing are individual portable apps for every need that can run in a portable OS (as the new "Windows To Go" feature makes the whole Windows 8 portable as well) or non-portable OS (such as a regular installation of Windows 7). And don't get passionate dude, this isn't a linux forum, this is an "all things UNIX" forum. Windows to my knowledge shares some code with BSD UNIX.

[NGRhodes]

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

apt-get purge only works if the databases aren't stored in a non-intuitive location.

What databases and what do you mean by intuitive location ?
My experience is purging is reliable, do you have an example of apt or dpkg (rather than bad packaging) can't purge ?

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

But after fixing the errors, gaps are left behind and the registry becomes large, fragmented and inefficient. Further, because the registry is loaded into RAM, the bloat also eats up memory. That's where tools that reliably defrag registry come handy.

No it does'nt.

Win XP and newer loads portions of the registry hive ondemand via the cache manager. Spaces in the registry file do not matter as the registry is loaded into the address is a random access fashion 16k chunks at a time.

Cheers, Nick

[NGRhodes]

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

Nop.. One thing is an entire portable OS with some built-in apps that can hardly be modified on the go such as what you are talking about (a "Live Linux Distro"). Another thing are individual portable apps for every need that can run in a portable OS (as the new "Windows To Go" feature makes the whole Windows 8 portable as well) or non-portable OS (such as a regular installation of Windows 7).

Your right, infact its much hard to make generic portable apps for Linux due to differences (binary compatibility, file system structure, configuration file differences etc) between the distros.
But on the flip side its generally easy to find a livecd with the tools you need or compile/add to your own LiveCD.

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

Windows to my knowledge shares some code with BSD UNIX.

Windows 2K and XP (other as well maybe) utilitised code from the BSD IP stack and that is pretty much it. Windows is not in the slightest bit Unix-like.

[UnknownK]

For me after going to terminal, its yum install xxx for a software installation and yum remove xxx for removal. Its as simple as that. Yum update xxx and it will find the update(if any) and install. Of course I am using Fedora and you don't write sudo everytime here. One time su will do. Fedora and other red hat based systems have the easiest command line installation. Its easier than software or pakage manager. Ofcourse in ubuntu and ubuntu based distros its a different thing.

I would be writing an essay for installing the same software in windows. Go to xxx.com, search software xxx, see if it is supported for your windows xxx, download to xxx directory, start installing manually, read TOS, read privacy policy, click next and don't forget to tick off the toolbar crap and so on.
And for removing, go install revo or total uninstall with the same procedure as above and remove the xxx using them. Don't forget to install a yyy registry cleaner and remove the registry leftovers if you are paranoid about the unremoved registry entries. And please don't complaIn next time when you can't boot into your computer or encounter BSODs or other unseen undescribable errors.. (hehe you will be saved probably because you did a registry backup). Haha see how easy it was compared to yum..

[UnknownK]

Originally Posted by act8192

Learning Linux Mint v13

I googled all over, can't find a clear description
Both have large lists. One of them has an indicator what's installed, and what's suported. How do I use this knowledge (or lack thereof) to zoom in on something I might want to install? How can I tell a safe package from some other since there's no indication where these things come from. Or what belongs together, when one decides to uninstall something.

Everything in your default synaptic and in your default mint software manager is safe.. Default is the keyword assuming you haven't tempered with the repositories. You just search the software, if it is available it will show up and it will download and install the dependencies itself.

[linuxforall]

Tiny Core Linux is 12mb, you can add few more functions and it will still run off the RAM like Puppy, how much more PORTABLE do you want really, maybe it needs to be a 4G OS sans anything but the OS itself to be considered portable

Originally Posted by Wild Hunter

Which is a good idea in some scenarios. Imagine a very cluttered registry (a years-old Windows installation of a teenager). A good registry cleaner can do the job of fixing the many errors this registry likely has.

What do you mean by errors? The registry is a giant configuration database. If there were errors in it, at least some applications would probably not work right (and in the worst case Windows wouldn't boot). Just like what happens on Linux if files in /etc are deleted.

BTW I will note that I was actually really wrong about registry size; a normal registry on XP would probably be around 50 MB total:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/45678-registry-size/

This sounds like a lot, but my /etc directory is about the same size (and dotfiles in my home directory are maybe another 20 MB).

In any case, you would probably have to install a huge amount of software, and already not have much RAM available, before the performance impact of "registry bloat" became noticeable... By which point you would probably be getting much more serious performance problems from Windows Search, Windows Defender, and/or your antivirus trawling through all the stuff on your hard drive.

[Hungry Man]

We've had this conversation before. Your registry is a few MB and it's loaded into RAM.

1) Access times are in nanoseconds. You could have a 250GB sized registry and access times would be virtually unchanged - picosecond differences.
2) You'll be lucky to save a few KB of RAM by doing what's a fairly dangerous act. Cleaning your registry is rarely something anyone should do and if you're smart enough to know when to do it you should be smart enough to do it manually. There's basically never any valid reason to defrag it.

Registry Virtualization basically means that applications are prevented from writing to System Folders in Windows' file system and ALSO to the ‘machine wide keys’ in the registry. Of course it's not primarily an anti-junk measure, but it has secondary effects to this direction as well. When applications are prevented from writing to to the ‘machine wide keys’ in the registry, much less residual registry junk is accumulated as a direct result.

Not really.

Both areas of the registry get loaded into RAM. It's just a separate hive, which provides nothing in terms of performance. It really is just a compatibility issue.

[act8192]

@mack_guy911,
Thanks for the explanation in post #2 with good hints.
Just what I needed.
I did read earlier, before installing,
http://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php
while great with the clearest installing instructions. The rest was somewhat useful at the beginning.

The Synaptic writeup
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto
is wonderful For me it's more easy to understand than the Software one.
At this point, I have a much better idea of what it's about.

@inka,
Your explanation in post #3 and description of "junk" etc is very helpful. Thanks.
Due to the the rest of the thread - is your suggestion to "ensure that "consider recommended packages as dependencies" is UNchecked." still valid? I hope that when the app package installs it will bring with it whatever it must have. So is the point of unchecking to eliminate junk (fonts, for instance) from what's really needed? I doubt it'll be known.

@UnknownK,
Great. Your post #38 makes it clearer for me as well. Thanks.
I suppose by safe you mean they won't mess up my system and safe from scumware.

@All Others,
Whether politically correct or not, whether is about linux or XP, the entire debate in this thread is for me useful, as well as fun reading Thanks.

[NGRhodes]

There really is a lot of misinformation about the registry.

Since XP/2003 server its loaded in 16kb chunks via the cache manager, utilising a max of 256 slots - Its documented in the Windows Internals book by Russinovich and Solomon.

There were performance/scalability issues with loading the registry entirely into memory. Previously (in Windows 2000 and NT4, I dont even know about Win95/98 !!) was limited by the address space of the system and was a real limit on the number of users that terminal services could host when the registry was mapped directly (also all the space/fragmentation consumed address space) causing excessive paging out of application-used memory address space, in some cases it was possible to have an unbootable system caused by registry fragmentation. By creating and indirect mapping layer (similar to how virtual memory maps to real memory) free space and fragmentation on disk does not matter directly to memory usage or performance of registry operations in Win XP and 2003 server and newer.

Note as part of the boot process the system hive still needs to be loaded read only into memory, but after the boot process its unloaded and the method of access mentioned above takes over.

Cheers, Nick

[inka]

@All Others,
Whether politically correct or not, whether is about linux or XP, the entire debate in this thread is for me useful, as well as fun reading Thanks.

Whew, I'm pleased (relieved) to read that you're not put off by the "noise" in your thread.

@inka,
is your suggestion to "ensure that "consider recommended packages as dependencies" is UNchecked" still valid?

Yes, still valid.
In synaptic package manager, it's a "remembered" preference (no need to set it each time you use synaptic)
While editing preferences, I would also suggest to checkmark "show properties tab in main window"
(offhand, I'm not sure that's the exact wording)
so that when you click (focus) on any package, you are presented with tabbed info panes.
If you're so inclined, you can easily refer to the dependencies tab ~~ there you will see an itemized list of any other packages a pkg "depends on". THE PERSON WHO PACKAGED THE APP (aka "package maintainer") may have additionally listed "recommended" packages. For example, the maintainer for a wordproccessor app might "recommend" one or several fonts packages.

I hope that when the app package installs it will bring with it whatever it must have. So is the point of unchecking to eliminate junk (fonts, for instance) from what's really needed? I doubt it'll be known.

Yep, that's the point exactly.
The persons filling the role of debian package maintainers are responsible for "be knowing"
and, across the 30,000+ packages, they do an excellent job.

All that to correctly uninstall an app? Looks very complicated

No, not "all that". Sorry to have added to your confusion.
Uninstalling is EASY.
Those utilities I mentioned are only useful if, and only if, you ever care to dig in
(toward OCD-ishly ensuring that your system is "squeaky clean clutter free", or however someone described it, in one of the earlier posts).

From what I've witnessed, one thing that seems to get overlooked is iconsets.
A package maintainer may declare a package containing a iconset package as a dependency... but during uninstall, the uninstaller (errs on the side of caution and) does not remove that iconset package. Cumulatively, extra fontsets you don't want/need can significantly bloat the size of your backup dataset. At 2000+ imagefiles (potentially 20Mb+) per iconset, I don't consider it OCD-ish to manually find/remove unwanted iconsets.

[act8192]

@inka,
Thank you very much. Your clarifications are superb.
I sort of thought that's how it would all work, but needed to make sure.

BTW, the last section about uninstalling being trouble is an answer to post#4, not mine.