winget-pkgs VS linux

7.0 is now available: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/pull/147886

I researched this for a WinGet thing: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/pull/110618

Ah, reminds me of that time I requested a .editorconfig file in a Microsoft repo: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/issues/329

Take dropbox as an example. This is what the yaml manifest looks like for that if you install it through winget. It literally has a hardcoded link to an .exe installer hosted by dropbox and then just set the flags to silent. I am not spreading misinformation, you are.

It's not quite the same though, as there are different considerations when using a repository of things a unified group has decided should be included and built (or slightly modified existing) packages for and a repo where anyone can submit a package that will go through some level of vetting. In the end I still believe most this discussion is really about individuals and how much trust they apply towards different groups and sources and is not really about Linux or Windows in particular as much.

1: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs

I never used winget, but probably: - https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/issues/107858 - https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy/issues/4027

It's probably not on the Store, winget pulls from both the Store and a community collection of manifests on GitHub: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs

I think that's part of the problem, if you don't have that package manager to bootstrap your signature key ring, DNS is your next best bootstrap. It is, of course, a terrible bootstrap for trust, but it is one so many users on Windows have been relying on for such a long time.

For power users on any modern Windows 10/Windows 11 there is at least WinGet now. Its manifests repo is becoming a very interesting (open) source of truth for common Windows applications. Admittedly, it in most cases doesn't seem to be checking specific code signatures in most cases either, but at least includes SHA checksums.

For instance, 7zip's manifests: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-pkgs/tree/master/manifes...

It's too bad there's still not a great option for "average user that doesn't know/trust how to use a CLI", given how sadly polluted the Microsoft Store can be for many common, especially Open Source, applications. For direct instance, because winget kindly includes Microsoft Store results when searching, there is a "7zip 22" in the Microsoft Store that costs some amount of money (winget details say "PaidUnknownPrice" for the pricing information; I'm on a corporate machine right now with the actual Store access locked so can't search in the actual Store right now) and the Publisher is listed as RepackagerExpress.com. (That website currently doesn't go anywhere, giving it a spot check.)

Having seen this, I may boot up my personal machine and try to report this specific Store listing for violating the Store's Open Source policies, though I'm unsure if such whackamole is all that useful. (Seems like it might be a useful winget feature request for it to provide Store Report URLs.)

For example, see that Firefox has /S here.

FFS predates FreeBSD and is in some capacity supported by all 3 major BSDs. I'm fairly confident that Linux actually supports it through the ufs driver ( https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/fs/ufs ); whether the use of different names in different places makes it better or worse is an exercise for the reader.

These are a bit easier to see what's going on:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/d5cf50dafc9dd5faa1e...

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/d5cf50dafc9dd5faa1e61...

Unfortunately Github doesn't have a way to render symbols for whitespace, but you can tell by selecting the spaces that the previous version had leading tabs. Linus changed it so that the tokens `default` and the number e.g. `12` are also separated by a tab. This is tricky, because the token "default" is seven characters, it will always give this added tab a width of 1 char which makes it always layout the same as if it were a space no matter if you use tab widths of 1, 2, 4, or 8.

There was also a Gentoo effort to run atop FreeBSD[0]. The challenge of course is that afaik none of the BSD kernel ABIs are considered stable. The stable interface is the BSD libc. That said, with binfmt_misc, I don't see a reason you couldn't just run (at least some) FreeBSD binaries on Linux with a thin syscall translation layer (rather something like qemu-system) and then your layer hooked via binfmt_misc. I'm not aware of anyone who has done this for FreeBSD, but prior efforts existed as alternate binfmts for SysVr4/5 ELF binaries[2]. Either way would take some elbow grease, but you *might* even be able just reuse binfmt_elf and just have a new interpreter for FreeBSD elf.

[0] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_FreeBSD

[1] https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.html

[2] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/fs/binfmt_elf....

> The original less-than check was deemed incorrect

It was only deemed incorrect because of an information leak. Not because it's a valid use-case for user space to copy smaller portions of *hwrpb into user space. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/21c5977a836e399fc71...

Correct. And the combined work needs to carry the MIT license text and copyright attributions for the MIT software authors. With binary distribution it must also be overt, not hidden in some source code drop, but directly accompanying the binary.

Many people who talk about relicensing never credit the MIT developers or distribute the MIT license text. "Because it's GPL now."

I don't think that you believe that, but many developers do.

Some don't see the need for source code scans for Open Source compliance, because the license.txt says GPL, so it's GPL. Prime example is the Linux kernel. There is code under different licenses in there, but people don't even read https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/COPYING till the end ("In addition, other licenses may also apply.") and conclude it's simply GPL 2 and nothing else.

Also be aware that sublicensing is not the same as relicensing.

> Does he have something against it?

He notoriously hates GNU Emacs, yes.

https://marc.info/?m=122955159617722

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...

So If we would only count code and not comments, it is only 9489 LoC Rust. Which would be about 0.03% and if we take all lines and not only LoC it would be around 0.05%

[0] https://github.com/XAMPPRocky/tokei

[1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/b401b621758e46812da...

AIUI fsync is built on futex_waitv which has been upstreamed. So this has to be more than that.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a0eb2da92b715d0c97b...