2021-12-24 09:43:00
On the CompTIA A+ Discord we got into a little chat about apt package management. Someone really wanted a real-world example. Since "apt install wireshark" doesn't really tell them much, I typed up the following.
What we haven't been hitting on here and which might not come up in the objectives either is "why?". Why do we even need yum, apt, brew, choco, dnf and so on?
To answer that in as short a time as possible: installing software can be a tricky thing, because of "dependencies". Software needs more software, which needs more software, to run.
A piece of software is almost never stand-alone: it needs libraries, drivers, programming language interpreters, supporting tools and so on. And if you start working with Python, Java, NodeJS and so on, you will really get stuck in "dependency hell".
On Windows, standalone software installs often come as MSI or EXE installer. On Linux they come in the form of DPKG, RPM and other package formats. Now, if you want to run software that was installed via only such an installer, you'll quickly run into problems "Help! I'm missing X, Y and Z! You need to install those too!".
Package managers like Yum, APT, Homebrew, Chocolatey and so on help us with that. They will look at the list of dependencies that such an RPM / DPKG might have and make a grocery list. :) "You want this? Fine, then we'll also get X, Y and Z and get'm setup for you."
That's the "WHY?". It makes sudo apt install wireshark so nice, because it'll fetch ALL the extras Wireshark needs to run. For example.
Now Overwatch? That's gonna be interesting. Because where do all these packages come from? From "repositories", central databases of software packages. They are often run by the company making your chosen Linux, but there's also independent ones (like choco, brew and more). Plus, commercial vendors also often have their own repositories setup which you can subscribe to. This is how you would install Microsoft's Gitlab, for example.
Question is: do Blizzard have a repo to install Overwatch from? I don't know. :)
kilala.nl tags: teaching, work, linux,
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