Ten avenues for installing applications and binaries in Bluefin DX. LXC counts

Bluefin
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Three days on Bluefin-DX and was able to identify nine ten eleven twelve avenues and distinct ways of installing applications and terminal binaries:

  1. OS layering,
  2. flatpak,
  3. AppImage,
  4. distrobox,
  5. Docker,
  6. Podman,
  7. Toolbox,
  8. NixOS packaging
  9. brew
  10. LXC ← added
  11. curl ← added
  12. Devbox (global) <— added

Am I missing something?

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Certain ujust scripts can install items, but I’m not sure if this counts.

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True.
ujust (just) allowed me to switch between Bluefin and Bluewfin-DX in few seconds. Also, I found out I could install productive brew from there.

Still, I haven’t explored ujust enough to be certain that I can create a specific development environment. Maybe it does. Let’s look:

  • ujust devmode
  • ujust install brew
  • ujust install pytorch
  • ujust install tensorflow

Maybe in the near future ujust could have options to select complete development environments via devcontainer, so users don’t have to worry about it. Something such as:

  • ujust install JavaScript
  • ujust install rust
  • ujust install Python+Jupyter+conda
  • ujust install R+Quarto
  • ujust install Julia
  • ujust install Java
  • ujust install C++
  • ujust install Lisp
  • etc.

And, why not, because we can dream, complete super-sets such as:

  • ujust install Web Development
  • ujust install SQL Development
  • ujust install NoSQL Development
  • ujust install Visualization
  • ujust install Graphic Design

And on the field of Artificial Intelligence, beyond the language constraints:

  • ujust install Robotics
  • ujust install Object Recognition
  • ujust install Natural Language Processing
  • ujust install Knowledge & Expert Systems
  • ujust install Logic & Reasoning
  • ujust install Search
  • ujust install Planning and Optimization
  • ujust install Machine Learning

That is what I am after.

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You missed the classic curl and pipe to bash method of installation that is popular these days… :slight_smile:

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Could you illuminate us with couple of examples of bash with pipe installation?

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Sure, I was referring to the style of installation where you use curl and the output is piped to a shell. Like for cargo:

curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

Lots of projects use this style…

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Haha yes, it is quite common.
However, unless you are executing inside a container, I think this way goes against the ublue/unmutable way of doing things.

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Sure of course, but that wasn’t a requirement of OP’s list which already had OS layering and brew on the list.

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What is the rank order for these install methods in terms of recommended, preferred, is okay, if you must, you can but really shouldn’t, and just don’t ?

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around what to choose when an application has multiple methods available. After “flatpack first” in the welcome doc there’s not much to go on.

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This is mentioned on the next page: Administrator's Guide | Bluefin

But also short on purpose, the order is Flatpaks for GUI apps and homebrew for CLI apps. Everything else is up to you. :smile:

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thanks @j0rge . I had portions of that page in my memory bank but didn’t recall where I found it. So from the point of view of Bluefin when I’m looking at something that has AppImage and Brew available but not Flatpak, Brew is preferred?

What about distrobox vs podman/docker vs toolbox?

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brew only has cli apps so that makes the decision easier. :smile:

What about distrobox vs podman/docker vs toolbox?

Most people don’t need to use any of this, this is developer territory.

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wget is also on image.

You also have sysexts and food old fashioned tarballs.

git clone aa well