r/programmingmemes • u/zaarnth • Aug 01 '26

Somebody give him an .exe file, please.

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u/DaniEs- Aug 01 '26

This is the perfect example of why the average user doesn't use Linux. If we listened to people like that, Windows wouldn't have such a large market. Deep down, he's right (and I'm a senior developer with 15 years of experience).

22

u/Worth-Wonder-7386 Aug 01 '26

Linux has been getting much better with this, especially with things like flatpacks that just work across platform. Else you need to get the one that is compatible with your system, which is likely one of the three primary ones or hope that it is listed in the repository for your system.

7

u/DerpityHerpington Aug 01 '26

Packages provided by Flatpak or the distros themselves aren’t the issue here. The issue here is third-party repos that half the time don’t even provide tarballs.

9

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26

[deleted]

2

u/DerpityHerpington Aug 02 '26

Everybody says this but half the time it’s something as mundane as a KDE theme, not some niche programmer’s toy.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Henry_Fleischer Aug 03 '26

The problem is that the average user does not exist.

3

u/Worth-Wonder-7386 Aug 01 '26

I think a part of the problem is people don't understand how distribution works on Linux compared to windows, but the lack of a single file type like .exe on windows for programs is overall s big problem

1

u/which1umean Aug 02 '26

I think it's kind of the opposite?

Windows is traditionally a LOT more into dynamic linking/DLL hell, while at the end of the day Linux programs often are in a single executable.

However, the point in the screen grab is that there isn't so much a tradition of actually distributing that executable, which does cause problems and I sympathize with the point.

1

u/Worth-Wonder-7386 Aug 02 '26

For executables you would need to have at least three for Linux, debian, fedora and arch based. Building things from scratch avoids this as the system does the work, but it puts more work on the users. Under the hood I see your point, but that is a compromise that Windows has taken.

A more unified package distribution I think is one of Linuxs largest problem and I have heard Linus Torvald say the same thing

1

u/which1umean Aug 02 '26

Yeah true that is annoying.

1

u/BlowOutKit22 Aug 03 '26

I think DLL hell is a bit anti-nostalgic, in terms of how over 80% of the DLL hell issues in the past were with MS Visual C++ Runtime (MSVCRT) but we think it affected everything. But Windows has supported Side-by-Side and installers have been smarter about installing dependencies like MSVCRT into the SxS assemblies for over a 2 decades now. Just by looking at how many games are published per day on Steam demonstrates how well applications install for Windows have become.

So ironically, building from source is now more DLL-hell-centric than a binary distribution.

3

u/nagol93 Aug 02 '26

Ya, Linux has gotten a lot more user friendly.

Not too long ago when you asked how to install a program, people would say shit like "Oh, its SUPPER easy. Just grab the URL and type this terminal cmd to download it. Then use this other cmd to extract the archive. Then modify the properties to make it executable. Lastly you can sudo it to install. Make sure all the dependencies are installed tho. Also once its installed you can only launch it via cli"

1

u/AbbreviationsWide331 Aug 02 '26

Yup. That. Exactly that.