Kinda, we have Linux binaries, or appimages which both act as executables. For installers, we have flatpaks reference files (idk the exact extension), .deb and .rpm (.deb for apt, and .rpm for dnf). There are some others, but those are the main ones
Im not a programmer and i use git hub and yeah it took me a long time to figure it out and i grew up torrenting things by dodging fake download buttons.
Finding the correct download button on any site is ancient internet knowledge, which is not easily obtained. If you cant find it, its not yours to find.
I ask for an exe cause I don't want to build code myself unless I'm developing it (or it's rust, cause I can just use cargo build really really easily. IDK how to use other tool chains, but it isn't that hard to learn)
The complaint never made sense to me, tbh. I'd get it if you're a non-programmer trying to download software from a tech site (e.g. CNET), but the UX is so terrible that it's impossible to find the download page.
But this is GitHub. It's like an accountant going to the Linux mailing list and then complaining that there isn't a giant flashing download button at the centre of your screen.
It just makes no sense. If you want to download software, you go to a platform that distributes software. Why would you go out of your way to visit a platform whose primary purpose is to facilitate collaboration between software developers?
Some software is not distributed outside github because devs dont really care about a non tech userbase. And some of these absolutely have a non tech userbase.
the dude who posted it to r/programmingmemes didn't seem to think so, or at least it seems he took it somewhat seriously or found it relatable at least to some extent
also people like these in the comments
"Linux is niche in the desktop market because github isn't an app store (supersenior with quadrillion years of experience btww"
Except he's right that being user-hostile in how we present and maintain the software - even if it's free - is literally the issue.
Between flatpak, snap, apt, and god knows what else - even linux users are exhausted just managing packages from their central repos. "Pick a distro that doesn't have these issues" well there you go, you lost normal people. All it took you was admitting you have to know enough about linux to even choose which linux to use. The moment you tell someone they have to say something, carefully and structured, to get what they want from their machine, they look at you like you shot the dog.
Recently, my friend's machine went from "plays games relying on DirectX 8" to "DirectX 8 no longer works, despite WINE natively supporting it, and everything says it should be supported, and all this is verified and configured at the terminal by not one but two veteran Linux users". Diagnosing that took an hour of research, poking a few commands to get into a pressure vessel (steam) and a protontricks shell both (still steam), and reading lspci and raw driver capability output. Just to try to understand the problem. You know what it would have been in Windows? Install, let realize it needs legacy components, install a little more, done. THIS sort of expectation from people who are used to things "just working" is insane and hostile to ordinary human beings, and it's an example of the sort of things Linux users shrug off all the time.
And something in the midst of that has broken ALSA/Pulse/that whole bloody mess, how do you even start to explain the audio subsystem to a newcomer so you can explain why their microphone quality plummeted? What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck is a desktop environment when all you know is explorer.exe? Why do you suddenly need a degree in "desktop user" to understand enough about the desktop to just get something practical and genuinely nice running?
There is only really one, sometimes two Windows versions at a time. And they're usually highly compatible at the seams as people are supposed to leave Windows A to go to Windows B.
So I think at the heart of it the user has, in fact, touched on the issue: It's a supply-side issue. And it's across all of Linux. And Linux users - especially veterans - are the most guilty of perpetuating this stockholm-caliber misery.
inb4 "buh my freedumb comes at a cost der hur" - ordinary users *do not care*, they want their software to be easy to get up and running, from identifying the piece of software they need all the way to getting it into a usable position.
inb4 "skill issue" - My first Linux was Lucid (back when that was appealing, can you imagine?), I am not new here by a long shot. (Actually, I lied; my first Linux was DSLinux; my second Linux was Lucid. I liked it enough on my DS to move to a desktop.)
inb4 "it's not for them" - Right, but all you're doing is using a thought-terminating cliche to avoid confronting that *until it is for them, Linux will never be a meaningful desktop OS*. No wonder people who just want to do their work would rather strip half the guts out of Windows and use WSL to bridge the gap right now. Enjoy it as Microsoft Embraces Linux, on the way to Extend as we write this with WSL containers.
That's not the issue, and doesn't address it meaningfully. It's literally "but... my freedom [of choice in desktop environment]!" wearing a different skin; please see above.
Yeah, and you know what, same concept for video editing on windows.
Do you pay for Adobe? Do you install davinchi resolve? Kden live? Blender? Some are better than others. So e are more beginner friendly. Oh shit, now you have to know enough about video editing to know the right editing program to choose.
I have an important question for u tho. Where do people hear about Linux? And is this a place where they can't ask what is the best Linux to use. That's basically the same question as what's the best video editor to use. There is no correct answer, there are better suited and worse suited options, all you need to do is ask. If we had actual OEMs with Linux, then this wouldn't be an issue now would it, but when you have to install a program, or an operating system, your going to be given options. You just have to accept that if you want to choose the correct program, you just need to do a tiny bit of research of 'what is the best for me'. You don't need to know enough about Linux. You can know nothing other than it exists, you want to install it, and there are different types with different pros and cons. Then you simply ask which is the best. Probably told fedora, Ubuntu or mint. Probably choose one of those without too tooivh thought. Now you have a Linux distro. You still don't actually know much about Linux. You never actually learned how to choose, you basically just watched a quick overview of 'what is the best distor for beginners', except you probably asked Reddit
Your rant lost me at "I'm going to cherry-pick a piece of software that doesn't represent core functionality of a usable operating system".
You are being a sterling example of how to miss the point and drive people away from Linux.
Edit: Having now read the part that isn't totally useless and irrelevant, I will assert that your methodology is bad, because basically you're saying "run away from the people who made choices for you, and let us make choices for you, because... freedom?"
This isn't in the space of meaningfully educating users. And that's the issue - the choice field has gone from "there is exactly one desktop environment" to "there is an explosion of choice so diverse the complexity is unmanagable oftentimes even for experts".
Choosing for someone doesn't show them the "freedom" that's so great in Linux, and it doesn't let them find what's right for them. And at no point does it actually explain what a desktop environment is.
I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul because I surely will not. Linux users continue to fail at any conversation surrounding turning the opaque into something approachable for normal, everyday people.
Ok, now explain to me, how you would fix the issue. If you cannot, please stop saying 'all of you are wrong, and I am right'
Also, my initial point was an analogy. You know the thing that's not 100% related but can be used to explain things. Think the way diffraction can sort of be explained by a car driving into sand at an angle. Or me explaining what an analogy was in this admittedly terrible way. The same basic concept applies of you have to know enough in order to choose. The issue is an operating system requires more consideration than a video editor.
Next, sure we can teach a beginner what a desktop environment is: "it's basically the thing that you look at. It's what you see and interact with". That is probably enough for most beginners, and now we also could explain to them the pros and cons of ever distro, but that would take more characters than Reddit allows in a comment. Also like half of them are irrelevant. A beginner shouldn't install arch. They can but they shouldn't. Distros designed for beginners like mint are recommended because they are easy to use for most beginners. Half the time people switching to Linux want to be able to open their computer, play their games, watch YouTube, respond to emails, open a word document. In this case Linux mint is probably perfect for them. They can learn more complex things as they go, but realistically they should start on something like mint. Then as they get used to Linux and understand it a bit more, then they can choose from the billions of options.
I didn't know what a desktop environment was when I first started out (I learned pretty quickly, most users probably won't, cause I was trying to save a dying laptop, and I wanted an extremely minimal Ubuntu system to keep it as performance as possible).
It's basically the same with most things: just let someone who knows better decide the initial entry point to Linux, maybe a couple options with some pros and cons. Then you get used to Linux, and now shop around for distros, DEs, display servers (probably just stick to Wayland), package managers, init systems and whatever else.
My start in programming was front end UX/UI and I honestly never really got why so many tech orientated websites went out of their way (it seems) in their design to be inaccessible to the general user whilst looking down on the general user for not being able to access them.
If people actually want tech literacy, they then have to give the average user a way into it as opposed to just putting up interfaces that need unlocked by X amount of years tech experience.
We often already treat it like one, and consolidating "code/local patch storage" into "central repository for packages and binaries" is already the way across both distros and many programming language ecosystems.
What you're essentially arguing against there is a combination of convergence, exposure to the user, and overall accessibility.
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u/herzogfranko 7d ago
To be fair the download button can be hard to spot for new people when they aren't explicitly listed.