APT 2.3.12 package manager released, will no longer let you break everything

Quoting: t3gIt is totally apt's fault and I'm surprised that the Debian devs still left that option to nuke your system so easily. I'm kinda glad this happened because it is a reality check for System76 that they need to be more careful with their releases.

I agree with others that apt should do an update before installing any packages.

I think the mistake that both Pop and Ubuntu do is that they don't fetch the latest packages during install. Debian's Network Install is fantastic as the installer is easy to use, and your first boot into the system will be fully up to date.

Quoting: damarrinThis is actually wrong. The UK has those huge sockets that can only work one way for electrical reaons (as far as I can tell), but other countries really don't. The US situation you describe is the norm, not the exception. This is alternating current, it'll work both ways because the current changes direction multiple times per second.

In Poland we have these grounded sockets/plugs that actually can be plugged in one way because there's a ground rod in the socket, though that is a limitation of the physical, not electrical, design. In neighbouring European countries they use almost the same plug but without the third rod and with two contacts on opposing sides of the plug and these can be put in every which way.

That's true, I forgot about the reversible European plugs. Though looking at the Wikipedia page for plug and socket standards it still looks like non-reversible is the norm and reversible the exception globally. (If nothing else, the socket used in China is non-reversible.) But perhaps it wasn't the best example.

Quoting: damarrinLinux and apt have been fine before they came along and breaking one's system is part of the learning experience and now there will be people who will be denied that.

I mean, you can totally still break your system in any number of other ways. In fact you can still break your system in this exact way, it just takes one extra step. (And personally, I've yet to break my system in 7 years of using Linux and that's one "learning experience" I'm happy to continue avoiding.)

Quoting: Philadelphus(And personally, I've yet to break my system in 7 years of using Linux and that's one "learning experience" I'm happy to continue avoiding.)

There is a saying: The fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

One more thing... to lay the blame on APT is ridiculous.
Perhaps you also blame the hammer when trying to hit a nail but instead hit your own thumb.

Quoting: Rooster

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: ObsidianBlkThose neon warning signs are there,

I think part of the problem was that there was no neon warning signs. The only warnings Linus got was an error from popshop that wasn't clear on what was happening... and a giant wall of text from apt.

That 'wall of text' ends with "you are about to remove essential packages, type exactly, 'Yes, I know what I'm doing' to continue."

Which is more than enough to say 'stop, you're about to do something horrendous to your system.' I have made many jokes before about not being able to do flashing red text in Confluence because of people not following the wiki... But really there are two things to blame here. 1) Linus being smart enough to be dangerous. 2) Linus not being patient enough to read the warning.

Since Linux distros wait for more users coming over from the Windows realm, package managers should expect users coming that have been trained to ignore most of the text that is beeing thrown at them during installation of software. For them it is almost unthinkable that the installation of a gaming software could uninstall parts of their OS.
So I think it's an improvement that such users now actively have to search for the command that can do harm, instead of being able to use it by just ignoring something.
I would love the error message being clickable (depending on the kind of error of course), linking the user to a site where he/she can read about and report problems and solutions with the package that led to the error.

I say there are 2 issues here:
The first one 100% apt/Pop OS fault and that is that this should NEVER have happened during simple package installation, even if done from terminal.

But.. as anyone who worked with computers for a long time knows.. One of those things that should NEVER happen will eventually happen. Doesn't matter if you are on Linux, Mac or Windows. Which brings me to the second issue.

The second issue is 50% user fault and 50% Windows fault for training its users to be dumb and not read Warnings (yes even if it's a simple installation of package, user should be expected to read Warnings and Errors).

So instead of package managers having to expect that their users will not read Warnings (which imo is ridiculous), I would say that the distros aimed at new users like Mint and Pop should include a message when running the Terminal (with the option to disable the message for future) that the Terminal is a high level tool and the user is expected to read and understand potential Warnings.

In my opinion the ridiculous part here is that you need to have superuser rights to install a simple application.
There are people out there, who are something in between new users and geeks. They are people that want to use computers in a secure, private way. They don't want to mess with their OS more than nessessary. Most of them are now on Windows or Mac and not on Linux, for a reason..
I think distros like Mint and Pop are not primarily aimed at new users, but at those people, new users or not. And since Mint and Pop (and ...) don't stand in the way of more advanced users, they're good for those too.
So the question is: Do they find a way to welcome the users they're aimed at, without giving up certain principles?


Last edited by Nevertheless on 20 November 2021 at 11:05 am UTC

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: slaapliedje2) Linus not being patient enough to read the warning.

Most newbie users aren't that patient, especially when it comes to walls of text.

The point is that apt should not have allowed him to break his system in the first place. That should not have happened, and the fault is 10% on that Steam package... and 90% on apt.

Apt is not a babysitter. It didn't even break his system. It was still working, it was just working in 'I have no Xorg anymore' mode. Which is a perfectly legitimate method of using Linux. :) It just was broken for what he was intending to do. It gave him ample warning that it was removing a bunch of crap. It's on the user to decide whether or not they want to remove all of that. He didn't even spend a second looking at it and just typed the 'yes, do as I say'. Also, has he seriously no clue that he shouldn't just copy / paste commands from random sites? That should be a known thing even for Windows users...

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Rooster

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: ObsidianBlkThose neon warning signs are there,

I think part of the problem was that there was no neon warning signs. The only warnings Linus got was an error from popshop that wasn't clear on what was happening... and a giant wall of text from apt.

That 'wall of text' ends with "you are about to remove essential packages, type exactly, 'Yes, I know what I'm doing' to continue."

Which is more than enough to say 'stop, you're about to do something horrendous to your system.' I have made many jokes before about not being able to do flashing red text in Confluence because of people not following the wiki... But really there are two things to blame here. 1) Linus being smart enough to be dangerous. 2) Linus not being patient enough to read the warning.

Since Linux distros wait for more users coming over from the Windows realm, package managers should expect users coming that have been trained to ignore most of the text that is beeing thrown at them during installation of software. For them it is almost unthinkable that the installation of a gaming software could uninstall parts of their OS.
So I think it's an improvement that such users now actively have to search for the command that can do harm, instead of being able to use it by just ignoring something.
I would love the error message being clickable (depending on the kind of error of course), linking the user to a site where he/she can read about and report problems and solutions with the package that led to the error.

I say there are 2 issues here:
The first one 100% apt/Pop OS fault and that is that this should NEVER have happened during simple package installation, even if done from terminal.

But.. as anyone who worked with computers for a long time knows.. One of those things that should NEVER happen will eventually happen. Doesn't matter if you are on Linux, Mac or Windows. Which brings me to the second issue.

The second issue is 50% user fault and 50% Windows fault for training its users to be dumb and not read Warnings (yes even if it's a simple installation of package, user should be expected to read Warnings and Errors).

So instead of package managers having to expect that their users will not read Warnings (which imo is ridiculous), I would say that the distros aimed at new users like Mint and Pop should include a message when running the Terminal (with the option to disable the message for future) that the Terminal is a high level tool and the user is expected to read and understand potential Warnings.

In my opinion the ridiculous part here is that you need to have superuser rights to install a simple application.
There are people out there, who are something in between new users and geeks. They are people that want to use computers in a secure, private way. They don't want to mess with their OS more than nessessary. Most of them are now on Windows or Mac and not on Linux, for a reason..
I think distros like Mint and Pop are not primarily aimed at new users, but at those people, new users or not. And since Mint and Pop (and ...) don't stand in the way of more advanced users, they're good for those too.
So the question is: Do they find a way to welcome the users they're aimed at, without giving up certain principles?

You absolutely still have to have superuser rights to install Windows / Mac software too. Flatpak / Appimage / Snaps are different in this regard. While there are methods in Windows and Mac that software distributors can use to not require admin access, most of them don't bother. You still have a prompt that requires admin access to get past.

I don't know why it's ridiculous to expect people to know how to read... If you start up the terminal with 'OMG don't touch this unless you know what you're doing!!' do you think anyone would ever attempt to try playing with the terminal and learning something?

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: ObsidianBlkThose neon warning signs are there,

I think part of the problem was that there was no neon warning signs. The only warnings Linus got was an error from popshop that wasn't clear on what was happening... and a giant wall of text from apt.

That 'wall of text' ends with "you are about to remove essential packages, type exactly, 'Yes, I know what I'm doing' to continue."

I'm not sure what side I end up on in this, but I'd like to note that is not how it goes. The wall of text ends with "you are about to do something potentially harmful. To continue, type in the phrase". The mention of essential packages is eleven lines up from that part.

"Potentially harmful" doesn't really sound that bad. It also sounds vague, like the kind of message you get when the computer doesn't really know just what you're doing or whether it's actually going to do anything important, but is just putting in the boilerplate because the command generally has the potential to do serious things. Especially if you come from the Windows world, where I think the OS bitches every time you do anything other than browse the web with Microsoft Edge . . .

Ha, yeah I misquoted it as I was typing on my phone.

It's accurate to say potentially harmful, as the system is still perfectly fine without Xorg.. just not for his requirements of having a desktop / playing games. :P

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: RoosterSo instead of package managers having to expect that their users will not read Warnings (which imo is ridiculous), I would say that the distros aimed at new users like Mint and Pop should include a message when running the Terminal (with the option to disable the message for future) that the Terminal is a high level tool and the user is expected to read and understand potential Warnings.

So for people who don't read warnings, what you want is a warning, because that will surely make them read warnings.

Shit, that's a good point. Well then the only way for them to learn to read them is the hard way. Like Linus did.

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: slaapliedje2) Linus not being patient enough to read the warning.

Most newbie users aren't that patient, especially when it comes to walls of text.

The point is that apt should not have allowed him to break his system in the first place. That should not have happened, and the fault is 10% on that Steam package... and 90% on apt.

Apt is not a babysitter. It didn't even break his system. It was still working, it was just working in 'I have no Xorg anymore' mode. Which is a perfectly legitimate method of using Linux. :) It just was broken for what he was intending to do. It gave him ample warning that it was removing a bunch of crap. It's on the user to decide whether or not they want to remove all of that. He didn't even spend a second looking at it and just typed the 'yes, do as I say'. Also, has he seriously no clue that he shouldn't just copy / paste commands from random sites? That should be a known thing even for Windows users...

Would it have even been broken for what he was intending to do? It's been a loooong while since I even had to look, but wouldn't he have had XOrg back with a simple...
 
apt install xorg
That said... at the time, there still would have been Pop_OS!'s bug with the Steam package, so Linus still wouldn't have been able to get Steam (easily).