The subject of downstream and upstream is a vital one within the Linux ecosystem, the place from one base distribution you may go many layers of distros deep earlier than even taking a look at all the opposite base distributions. Inside that veritable jungle you get questions on who’s answerable for packaging software program, the place to report bugs discovered with a particular software, in addition to what ‘LTS’ actually means in a shopper context. These and different factors are raised in a recent video by [Brodie Robertson], with many examples of issues going tragically mistaken.
There’s argument to be made that finally it’s the distro that’s answerable for the software program that they supply by way of their repositories. As [Brodie] exhibits within the video, there are a couple of instances the place an ‘LTS’ distro makes use of an previous model of some software program that accommodates a bug that has been fastened some time in the past, so reporting it to the developer is fairly pointless, whereas the distro maintainers ought to repair it with backporting of patches or updating the model.
From an finish consumer expertise this additionally makes essentially the most sense, as in the long run they simply wish to have the Home windows expertise of downloading a proverbial installer, clicking by way of no matter dialogs pop and have working software program. If the software program is supplied by way of the distro, it’s their duty, the identical manner that you simply contact the developer for those who get a DEB or RPM from a GitHub challenge web page and it doesn’t work.
This present Linux Chaos Vortex may be referred to as a serious challenge when e.g. FreeBSD has no such upstream/downstream points, with cross-platform installers being mainly not possible on Linux ever because the Linux Customary Base effort died.
Maybe Linux will get a distroless future, nonetheless, which can lastly herald that 12 months of the Linux Desktop.