Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

There's nothing about rpm that makes it inherently better than any other package system.
It used to be the *worst* package manager, now it's merely mediocre.
Switching to rpm should *not* be a priority. I'd prefer no switch at all since there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing it.
And, IMO debian packages have a history of much better quality maintainers.

Why not opkg? (formerly ipkg, suitable for embedded)
Or portage? (currently the best)

Why is the top brass at Nokia micro-managing developers into choosing crappy solutions?
Clearly they are clueless about the technical burden of their decisions.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

There is. See previous page.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

What? transactions?
We're talking about an embedded system here, recording unnecessary information because of the odd chance that a user wants to roll back to an old, possibly even more faulty version of something is a good idea? New versions of packages are there because they are better, this is the same kind of brain damaged thinking that microsoft has going on with their "driver-rollback" which causes more problems than it solves.
It's extremely likely, that the old version of the software won't be able to cope with a newer configuration format, and tadaa! you've lost all your configuration, with the real possibility of a broken system.

I don't know what you mean about the embedded gpg signing, can't .deb files be signed?

And don't even get me going about the LSB, their idea of standards is everyone doing the same misguided stuff they do. Stable ABI anyone?
They've been around for what, 10 years? And how many cared? Mainly distros used exclusively by people who wear ties? (the same people who might come up with an idea like LSB)
And wtf is ubuntu doing in there? I can almost hear Linus reaching 18krpm in his grave, oh wait, he's not dead yet?
It's lucky they only have a list of compliant distros, since a list of non-compliant distros might be way too long.
Propaganda like the LSB damages free software.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Arguing about deb vs. rpm now, eh? This gotta be the geek version of a tit-for-tat fight.

Tastes great, less filling... Ford vs. Chevy... boobs vs. booty...

Either system will have fans... apparently.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

No, because in this case, there's a chevy and a chevy factory, and someone wanted everything changed to produce fords instead, because hell, ford sounds nicer.

Now, if they wanted it changed to produce lamborghini instead, the situation would be different.

This might be the stupidest car analogy yet, but the point still holds.
(I've mentioned two other package managers, and there are others, which are in different ways superior to both the choices currently on the table, but switching from .deb to rpm is just plain stupid)

It's irrelevant what you, I or other people are fans of, you have to be able to argue solely based on technical merit, otherwise you're in the wrong business.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Wow.. this was a pleasantly unexpected result.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5CETMV4nz0

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

This is again wrong thread about this discussion, but here goes once again....

Roll back is not the only property which comes with transactions. Transactions makes package updates error tolerate. For example if battery goes dead middle of updating, or you drop your phone and battery flies off. When the system reboots, it can auto-correct the problem either finish the transaction or cancel it and tell the user that last action was not successful but it didn't broke anything at least. Or if some developer (maemo test and devel repos) forgets something and there is a dependency problem, after installation some other things are not working, user can rollback to the previous state and report the problem to the developer.

Transactions is good to have in the package management, some people might think it is essential as the system state is pretty much like a critical database. Of course transactions feature can be disabled if there is good reasons, but I doubt in high end mobile phones there would be any. Anyway, rpm is in this way much better than deb, although in other technical ways they are pretty much identical.

I mean that in rpm-based systems nowadays it is a common practice to have all rpm-packages GPG-signed. GPG-signatures are embedded in the packages and do not get lost even if you transfer and install packages through ftp-program, wget, usb-stick, bluetooth OBEX transfer and so on and then install the package without alive connection to the original repository.

You can google lots of bad examples where people install un-authenticated deb-packages with dpkg -i. MITM attack on non-authenticated data (stream) is trivial if you have the skills.

The kludged way to embed GPG signatures in the deb-packages is not really used by anyone or anywhere. Show me where debsigs would be actively and routinely used, like embedded GPG signatures are used almost without exceptions for example in Fedora? Also it is important that developers have a standardized way to embed the GPG signature to the package release automatically.



There are many good things in LSB. Without them Linux would be even more fragmented it already is. And as said, if Debian+Ubuntu would had changed to use rpm-system long ago, Nokia now wouldn't have the problem with its developers implementing rpm support to Ovi and Meego. A good case of fragmentation in Linux which clearly causes troubles.

Debian and Ubuntu (and some other smaller players) haven't just taken the fragmentation problem in Linux seriously enough, and now see, it costs Nokia lots of money and eventually may mean that Meego won't succeed because it was too late compared to Android.

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Hello Everyone.

I bet every single one of you will hate me after this post but...

I've been thinking a lot about the Nokia-Microsoft partnership, and about You didn't like (most of You anyway) the decizion. I've been reading your posts about disappointment, anger and so on. I've been reading about wrong decisions, and that Nokia turned the community down.

Well, it's not Nokia fault. It's YOURS.

Nokia gave you the best platform evere created for the mobile phone, and the decent hardware, i could risk saying - the best hardware at the time. And what You give in return?
When i bought my N900, there was about 300 applications on maemo-extras. It was June 2010 - after 6? 8? months maemo community created 300 applications... For an android i bet there are 300 diferent solitaire games.

Here is the problem - it is community that wasted the biggest potential a mobile phone ever had. How do you expect Nokia to invest in platform, that have almost no applications?

Nokia gave you tools, build the ship, but it is the crew - You, who burned it. Android - this pathetic, poorely featured OS, has 300 apps daily. We have yearly. It is not about a support, or money - there are LOTS, better or wors apps for Android. And it is because of community,that android grows. Not because google made so much effort about it.

I believe, that if there was 60k apps for maemo, Nokia won't even think about pairing with M$.

And now - we have meego. It is available for n900 for how long 4? 6 months? How many games there are for meego? I didn't find any - yes i wasn't looking to hard. But nor will the average user.

There will be n950. Don't waste the second chance, because there will not be any more.

Sorry, if my post is chaotic, i bet it is.
Sorry, if You don't agree with me.

And please - don't say i didn't appreciate your work. Some of you have written great apps, which i use every day. I just think there are to few. And don't say "if you are so smart, why didn't you writ e this tousand apps?" I didn't because i can't - but i'm not yelling about nokia mistake and disapointment.

Now You can hate Me.
Regards...

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

Wow...honestly?

Are you ******ed?

Re: Nokia - Microsoft partnership (merged threads)
 

@Qrchack

Are you serious? Do you really think that ALL Android apps are made by the community?
The difference between Maemo and Android is that we have ONLY THIS community, while Android has its own community, Google and many other companies working for it.

Nokia-M$ partnership has nothing to do with applications or communities: it's based only on $$$

You want more apps? Start coding.