Thanks for your VERY detailed reply. Some of it was "over my head", but relevant and true - although I personally like and use KDE despite it being quite bloated for many years now.
As an aside - I got rid of KMail, Akonadi and all their "friends" years ago. It's hard to believe that an email program has about 80 dependencies and "suggests" another 20 packages!!! As I wrote, I intentionally did not include too many details about the problem since I was not really looking for a solution. The short version - this seemed to be caused by a broken dependency and neither apt-get or dpkg were able to solve this until I manually deleted a few post-install scripts. So the "blame" should probably fall on the way apt-get and dpkg handle dependencies and/or such scripts, and not so much on the Kubuntu maintainers. Although I did save the relevant apt and dpkg logs, I don't think that contacting the Kubuntu maintainers will help because they will probably "blame" the software developers who packaged the monodevelop IDE (and provided there own PPA) - which never worked for me in the first place so I probably should have uninstalled it months ago :-). On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 21:17:39 -0400 Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote: > On Sun, 11 Aug 2019 09:05:24 +0300 > Shlomo Solomon <shlomo.solo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Let me start by saying that I'm not looking for a solution - I > > solved my problem. I'm just angry and letting off some steam. > > [snip successful attempts using a ~10 step apt/dpkg witch's brew] > > I feel your pain. Probably we all do. > > And it's likely the better people to let off steam at would be: > > 1) The maintainers of your distro > > 2) The maintainers of your "Desktop Environment", if any > > 3) The authors of the software concerned > > > DISTRO: > > Your complaint isn't very detailed, but the fact that you needed apt > to fix it suggests you're using a Debian derived distro. Most Debian > extension distros, such as Ubuntu, Mint and Knoppix, add > hypercomplexity in order to make them more magically "we do it all > for you" and "user friendly", or just to make things look pretty. > > Debian itself, once a simplistic distro, has been slowly complexifying > itself, first by defaulting to selecting of that ball of > confusion Gnome3, which itself has been complexifying at a remarkable > rate, and then by pledging allegiance to systemd: The ultimate ball of > confusion. > > About the only apt packaged distro I could recommend today, from a > dependency-sanity point of view, would be Devuan, which rejected > both Gnome3 and systemd. > > I find it amusing that Debian's solution to substituting a non-systemd > init system involves a many-step raindance where you pin this package > and hold back that package. > > Of course, Redhat and Redhat-derived distros are worse. > > Tell your distro maintainers to quit making package recommends into > hard requirements, and to find better solutions than secret apt > meetings with secret dpkg handshakes, or else consider not packaging > it at all. There are usually substitutes and equivalents. > > > DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS: > > Desktop environments, which bind a window manager and a bunch of > applications together, including all sorts of interdependencies and > promiscuous communications inside and outside of dbus, were obviously > a bad idea from the beginning, for people who want to control their > computers rather than the other way around. > > If you use a desktop environment, write to them and tell them to > reduce promiscuous communication and dependencies. They'll laugh at > you, of course: Their purpose on this earth is to create obscenely > interdependent black boxes. > > You can avoid a lot of this by going back to a window manager and > selecting your applications a-la-carte, trying mightily not to include > desktop environment apps. If enough people were to do this (not very > likely, most people are wedded to their "we do it all for you" > environments), the "desktop environments" might catch on and put more > of a priority on modularity and thin interfaces (or no interfaces > where not needed). > > I kicked KDE and every KDE app and library off my computer in > 2012-2013, and lived to tell about it. I've never used Gnome3, and > slowly but surely I've been kicking its apps and libraries off my > computer. Now I boss my computer around, not the other way around. > > > THE SOFTWARE AUTHORS: > > True story. When using Python writing a piece of free software > intended to be used by others, I needed one minor but not obvious how > to code functionality. So I asked how to code it on the Python IRC > channel. Not one answer, but three or four people told me to use some > ginormous library, itself having lots of dependencies, that was not > part of the standard Python distribution. > > I explained that I didn't need all that stuff, I just needed this one > functionality. I didn't want my users to have to integrate this > library into their systems. "No problem", one of the IRC denizens > proclaimed, "that's what the Python <whatever> is for: You can build > your own Python interpreter for your one application, and ship the > interpreter along with the app". Look at your computer's clock: This > is not an April Fools joke, this happened. > > If course I said "no", and then the real abuse happened, with the > usual "don't reinvent the wheel" and "scared to learn new things" and > a new creative diss: "Real programmers try new packages just to get > familiar with them, it's a real opportunity!" > > Unfortunately, these guys weren't unusual. Way too many programmers, > in the name of avoiding reinventing the wheel, integrate somebody > else's wheel, when all they needed was an easily available single > spoke. You know who suffers? The distro maintainers and the users. > > All too many developers put absolutely zero priority on simplicity. > The slightest improvement in "pretty", or the slightest "improvement" > to keep the user from having to use a text editor, is perfect > justification to bring in a gargantuan software library with poorly > documented API, lots of child dependencies, grandchild dependencies, > and who knows how far down the tree it goes. And at any given time, > at least one dependency of that software dependency tree gets buggy or > goes unmaintained or sets a dependency on something so modern it won't > work with your distro, and you get to use a 10 step apt/dpkg > choreography. > > Tell the software authors your objections to gratuitous dependency > inclusions, as well as unnecessary and unhelpful communications with > barely related software. Tell them you choose software to work and > keep on working, not to be pretty or spare you from using an editor. > > And then do what you told them: When evaluating free software > alternatives, significantly downvote those with too many, or > unnecessary, dependencies. And if the simpler software lacks a feature > you need, you can usually kludge it together with a couple > shellscripts and maybe some Python/Perl/Ruby/Lua/awk/grep/sed. We all > hate to kludge, but I think the ultimate kludge is some conceited > developer requiring 100K lines of imported code to give a couple > features he could have done in 100 lines of self-written code, if > he'd bothered. > > I copied the GoLUG mailing list because it's my home-town LUG, and the > Devuan mailing list because they're the one direct Debian fork > that eschews unnecessary dependencies and intermodular communications. > Notice that some forks and extensions of Devuan also keep complexity > to a minimum. > > SteveT > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-il mailing list > Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il -- Shlomo Solomon http://the-solomons.net Claws Mail 3.16.0 - Kubuntu 18.04 _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
