[Digikam-users] Generic Linux question

[Vlado Plaga]

On Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:34:24 -0400
Paul Verizzo <paulv at paulv.net> wrote:

> I have spent the last several weeks trying out about ten Linux
> distros in Virtual Box.

[...]

> Closing, the question is about how Linux apps are updated......

Others have already supplied relatively detailes answers. I just want
to add: the way software is distributed in Linux simply is quite
different to the Windows (or Mac OS) way. You may notice that many
complex applications only require a fraction of the disk space
comparable applications use on these commercial systems. My e-mail
program (Claws Mail) for example has an "uncompressed size" of less
than 4 MBytes, according to the package manager. On Mac OS 10.5 "Mail"
uses 289 MBytes! One reason free software applications can be so small
is because they share a lot of "libraries" - but that of course makes
it difficult to update, because quite often newer versions of
applications require newer versions of the libraries which are no
longer compatible to the older versions... thus braking other
applications that depend on the same library. Of course package
management software is there to make sure such brakeage does not happen,
but it's a complex issue nevertheless.

Also free software more often than commercial software follows a
"release often, release early" philosophy. This of course means that
released software is not that stable and can have more bugs. The severe
bugs in DigiKam 2.0.0 could be one reason it is not yet included in
Debian "unstable" (a kind of rolling release) which otherwise often is
quite fast in picking up new versions:

- Face recognition is in the user interface, but according to developer
  Marcel Wiesweg it does not work yet:
  http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/digikam-users/2011-August/013766.html
- The new XMP sidecar support is only half-implemented:
  http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/digikam-users/2011-August/013996.html
  https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220545
- On many (Debian Linux) platforms digiKam 2.0 does not even compile:
  https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279581
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness#Endianness_and_operating_systems_on_architectures

Regards,

Vlado

-- 

       Vlado Plaga                        __o
    http://vlado-do.de                 _o/\<,_
    update: 2011-08-14                 (U)/ (u)
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