CentOS - Feb 2021 - How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 04:47, Simon Matter <simon.matter at invoca.ch>
wrote:
> >
> > Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL
has
> > a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> > other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an
addon to
> > EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more
difficult to
> > get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> > long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm
-ba'
> > .... back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot
wasn't a
> > cardinal sin.....
> >
>
> I've just started reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ and
> realized this became a problem which hurts EPEL much more than Fedora.
>
> IMHO it simply got too difficult to maintain packages for quite a number
> of software tools. It explains why there are so many missing, outdated or
> dead packages in Fedora and more so in EPEL.
>
> What worries me even more is that things have changed to be worse with
> every release than becoming better.
>
>
To put it bluntly, is that there are multiple issues going on:

1. We have a large number of people who have gotten used to someone else
doing the work for them and not having to care about the software
themselves. In doing so they have this idea that building the software is
exactly like it was when they got into computers. [* This isn't a new
phenomena]
2. Software gets more complicated and more interdependent to do the many
things software consumers expect it to accomplish.
3. Software changes more rapidly because more people are able to work on
code and people have this odd thing of deciding that whoever wrote the code
last was a complete idiot and this new method/language is much better. [The
only time it is funny is the once a week where a git blame shows you that
the last idiot was you.]
4. With millions of software consumers, there are millions of 'opinions'
of
what they need and Linux being a system which allows you to shoot your foot
in a billion ways tries to accomplish all of them.

* When I was getting into software in the 1990's there were a lot of people
who had been using Unix systems from the 1970's who found 'modern'
software
to be too complicated to build and coders were out of their minds for
adding in such complexity when no one needed an editor more than ed. At the
time I thought they were 'joking' but when I went to work at various
places
I found they were dead serious. The change is that where in the 1990's
there were only hundreds of people like that, now there are maybe a low
million.

Trying to build large amounts of divergent code and make it stay working is
very hard. As much as modules are a bane of my existence, something like
them is absolutely necessary for many complicated stacks from desktop
software to web applications. Writing basic rpms is even more complicated
than in 1999 because there are so many corner cases which have to be dealt
with. Writing modules is adding more layers of indirection on top of that
because it is trying to keep the Rube Goldberg machine of each individuals
'choices' going.

Frankly unless someone can figure out a way to make the packaging
janitorial work sexy enough to have people interested in it.. or people who
need this stuff actually pay people to do it.. this is all going to fall
apart like all infrastructure which was 'someone else's problem'.

> Regards,
> Simon
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

> On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 04:47, Simon Matter <simon.matter at
invoca.ch> wrote:
>
>> >
>> > Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in
EPEL
>> has
>> > a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with,
amongst
>> > other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an
addon to
>> > EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more
difficult
>> to
>> > get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm
as
>> > long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive
'rpm -ba'
>> > .... back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot
wasn't
>> a
>> > cardinal sin.....
>> >
>>
>> I've just started reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ
and
>> realized this became a problem which hurts EPEL much more than Fedora.
>>
>> IMHO it simply got too difficult to maintain packages for quite a
number
>> of software tools. It explains why there are so many missing, outdated
>> or
>> dead packages in Fedora and more so in EPEL.
>>
>> What worries me even more is that things have changed to be worse with
>> every release than becoming better.
>>
>>
> To put it bluntly, is that there are multiple issues going on:
>
> 1. We have a large number of people who have gotten used to someone else
> doing the work for them and not having to care about the software
> themselves. In doing so they have this idea that building the software is
> exactly like it was when they got into computers. [* This isn't a new
> phenomena]
> 2. Software gets more complicated and more interdependent to do the many
> things software consumers expect it to accomplish.
> 3. Software changes more rapidly because more people are able to work on
> code and people have this odd thing of deciding that whoever wrote the
> code
> last was a complete idiot and this new method/language is much better.
> [The
> only time it is funny is the once a week where a git blame shows you that
> the last idiot was you.]
> 4. With millions of software consumers, there are millions of
'opinions'
> of
> what they need and Linux being a system which allows you to shoot your
> foot
> in a billion ways tries to accomplish all of them.
>
> * When I was getting into software in the 1990's there were a lot of
> people
> who had been using Unix systems from the 1970's who found
'modern'
> software
> to be too complicated to build and coders were out of their minds for
> adding in such complexity when no one needed an editor more than ed. At
> the
> time I thought they were 'joking' but when I went to work at
various
> places
> I found they were dead serious. The change is that where in the 1990's
> there were only hundreds of people like that, now there are maybe a low
> million.
>
> Trying to build large amounts of divergent code and make it stay working
> is
> very hard. As much as modules are a bane of my existence, something like
> them is absolutely necessary for many complicated stacks from desktop
> software to web applications. Writing basic rpms is even more complicated
> than in 1999 because there are so many corner cases which have to be dealt
> with. Writing modules is adding more layers of indirection on top of that
> because it is trying to keep the Rube Goldberg machine of each individuals
> 'choices' going.
>
> Frankly unless someone can figure out a way to make the packaging
> janitorial work sexy enough to have people interested in it.. or people
> who
> need this stuff actually pay people to do it.. this is all going to fall
> apart like all infrastructure which was 'someone else's
problem'.
Well, unfortunately yes, EPEL is on a good way to go where DAG, ATrpms,
NUX, freshrpms and all the others already are.

Ironically, CentOS was the reason for other clones like Scientific Linux
to vanish, now CentOS Linux vanishes itself. The same goes with EPEL, it
was one nail in the coffin of so many third party repositories, now it
seems to go there as well.

What is even more sad is the fact that everybody is now waiting for Navy
Linux, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux to get their huge work done to produce
three, technically mostly identical systems. They'll still all lack the
same thing which is a good package repository for things not found in
RHEL.

Doesn't it mean burning a huge amount of CPU cycles and storage for little
additional gain in the end?

Sadly, that's not how open source works best.