Whilst this link does not indicate its origin, it does explain/confirm that it is separate from the system:
Just to add that .deb was from Debian, and as you have already stated, .rpm is from Red Hat (redhat package managerl, and more recently in respect of red hat based distros, yum, now superseded by .dnf:
Lastly if you want to install a package that is only available as an .rpm, you can convert it using a package called 'alien' to convert to .deb. Conversely if you are running a Red Gat based distribution, you can convert .deb to .rpm by using a package called 'worm'.
It's good to know that they're convertible, but that doesn't address the core issue. Adding another step to convert it just to use something you want may not be difficult, but it's friction. The way companies get you to do what they want is by minimizing friction. Want to use our service? Look, you don't even need to sign up, just use your Google ID! Want to avoid OneDrive? We're going to make that as high friction as possible, so that as many of you as we can get set it up just to make Windows quit asking you to at boot!
Being separate from the system is part of what allows AppImage to work reliably. It carries its dependencies with it, so a system change won't alter them. That's got problems. I won't pretend it doesn't, and some of those can extend to security problems. To users educated on Linux, there are major advantages to packages made properly. To someone who just wants their damn program to work, the lowest friction method will be preferable almost all the time. I'm using OBS as a flatpak now, not because I wanted to, but because that got rid of the stuttering in recordings without going down a rabbit hole for who knows how long.
In a more extreme example, the Internet had everything AOL had to offer before it appeared, but it was largely inconvenient to find and use for people who lacked the knowledge or interest in figuring it out. But the tech savvy were happy, so we stuck with IRC and so forth. Then AOL rolled up, made things easy for one and all, and the Internet gained millions of new users. Compuserve and Prodigy also had a shot at it, but didn't do as good a job of making it easy to do what people wanted, so they lost out.
What I'm saying is, there WILL BE a low friction, distribution independent method. The fork in the road is "make one that meets the norms of Linux," "advise people to the one that's least bad," or "condemn them all and have the big guys that concern you (justifiably; I'm here to get away from MS!) ultimately have their next systemd." (And yes, I realize "make one" is kind of unhelpful and non-trivial, the way people tell me "just learn Japanese" when I dislike poor localizations, but it is ultimately the only way to completely solve the problem in both cases.)
I briefly joined the test group for Windows 10, it automatically without my consent started uploading to One Drive everything I had saved to Documents. After a very small amount of unrequested uploads which were paltry in size, that I needed to sign up for more space at £3.50 a month. My solution was to delete One Drive. My preferred Cloud Storage presently is murena.io. When I joined after purchasing an e.foundation Fairphone 3+ I got a free e.email account and 1 Gb of free Cloud Storage and all their servers are in Norway not in Data Scraping US. I now pay a very reasonable £16 a year for 20 Gb of storage which is all I need. So I think, in terms of this thread it is a case of being aware what is out there, and what respects your Privacy. It can be a maze, and takes time to find a clear path through it. In my early days of GNU/Linux I discovered the community edition of Linspire, Freespire. Now this was an excellent distribution, Debian based, a Windows like desktop (KDE I think), but a security issue if you installed just yourself which gave you automatic root priveleges, but easily remedied if you installed a separate root account, then your own account as a standard user after install.
They had a brilliant software installer which used an easy to use GUI, called Click'n'Run. It was just about to reach it's zenith, when Michael Robertson, the man behind the paid version, Linspire, sold everything off to Xandros, which was comprised of what used to be Corel Linux (of Word Perfect fame).
I do find Q4OS a pleasant experience which uses its own software installer, OSI. When it installs a package it shows what it is being installed and where the libraries are being placed in the system, but not slow enough for you to note everything. Q4OS is a fork of Debian, and whilst it sadly uses systemd, I find it a better fit for Windows users, whether it is the Plasma 5.27 version or the Trinity Desktop version available in 64-bit and 32-bit. There are not many distributions that offer 32-bit, which means there are still some distributions that follow the old valid tenet of breathing new life into old machines. A classic example was the Eeepc netbook that came with Windows XP Home. The service I worked for used these for students as a display device for Braillenotes, which were replaced with small monitors so that mainstream teachers in school could see what the blind students were entering on their Braillenotes. When the Eeepc netbooks were decomissioned, the Manager of the Service started to use one of them for working at home. She came to me complaining it was no longer usable as Windows updates had filled the system partition. Now these were unusual machines. They came with a 10 Gb SSD with forced partitions of 4 Gb for the system and 6 Gb for Data. I tried to reinstall XP on the 6 Gb partition ... it wasn't having any. I searched the web which confirmed it was not possible. Solution? I installed Zorin 6 Core on the 6 Gb partition and was the first time I had to use '/boot' partition on the 6 Gb partition to ensure '/' on the 6 Gb would boot. The 4 Gb partition was used for '/home'. I took it one step further and naughtily installed a third-party app called 'Win 2.7-7' (not sure if I have remembered correctly) but what this did was install the Windows 7 bootsplash, and also installed all the MS program icons in Zorin's Arc Menu. I then installed Wine so I could install a licenced copy of MS Office 2007 Standard. Everything worked perfectly ... and she never used it!
Android or Samsung... I cannot remember which... was doing this thing where once in a while, it would show you a slideshow, composed of the images in your phone camera that you have taken, playing music and titled "Your Memories Of -such and such date-"
Which is annoying and invasive. I did not pay much attention to it.
I was selling on eBay as a seller at the time, so a lot of my camera photos were of those to accompany item descriptions.
One day, I got an alert saying I have memories available. What? I thought. Am I getting that old?
I opened it and pictures of HO Scale Steam Engine parts and wrenches were coming into focus and slowly zooming in on them with a background of Epic Music. I got a laugh out of it.
It is a funny thing. I have no password locking my phone. Any human being that picks it up, if so inclined, can just go through all my texts and photos. No one ever does... But... somehow, a company doing it seems invasive. They will use it for nefarious purposes. I wish I could password lock them out.
I remember this and how angry it made me. And I could not get it to stop.
I also use Murena and have an e.email address.
You addressed it yourself: "No one ever does." You've chosen low security on the device itself, knowing or at least believing, that no one's going to scoop it up and look, whether out of decency, fear of repercussions, or simply not having the opportunity because it's on your person. The company didn't ask, and actually did do it.
One is hard pressed to use an Android phone without signing into Google, but even on Samsung hardware, it's not too hard to sign out of a Samsung account. By not using a Samsung account and by not using Google Photos, they get none of this, and there's nothing preparing galleries for me.
Can't speak to the situation at the time, but I uninstall OneDrive, which stops it. I stuck with it for quite a while before becoming more and more irritated, because I really liked how well Office worked with it, but we're past that point. I use ProtonDrive at considerably more cost than the £16 @swarfendor437 cited, but I DO use all of their services except Pass (waiting on feature parity with Bitwarden) and wallet. (I remain surprised that the Proton userbase voted for a bitcoin wallet and AI writing assistant, but at least neither can touch my stuff).
It was OneDrive nagging that started me down the path to Windows abandonment, and Recall that finalized it.
I must have done this: I know I do not use Google Drive or Photos.
All of the above. Around trusted areas, my phone is often set aside where anyone can access it but outside of that, I have never left it anywhere. Ever forget your phone somewhere, leave it at the store at the checkout counter... Me: Nope.
I know plenty of other people that have and do, many times.
I use protonmail, but not the drive. Likely due to lack of need - I get 40 or 60 gigs free storage from the company so...
I assume you mean Murena; a free Protonmail account is only 1 GB. My cloud storage use is around 21 GB currently, so a paid account was needed. Plus, I'd had some issues with the VPN I'd been using at the time, so moving into an ecosystem I found much more trustworthy and which provided multiple needed services felt worthwhile.
...it broke my GRUB so badly I had the dreaded GRUB command prompt, so not lately. The main thing keeping me from retrying is that I don't like how System76's devs are behaving regarding kernel development. I'd be willing to give them another look when their Cosmic DE is out of alpha.
Linus Torvalds actually made a number of the points I did, with almost as much meandering when he mentions having to build packages for multiple distros. Relatively tame, but slight language warning; it is Linus Torvalds after all.
He's not addressing any of the specific independent package formats, but his point was that making packages for numerous distros isn't ideal.
The danger of this viewpoint is that you are narrowing choice. Perhaps the best way forward is we should return to .tar.bz, extract, cmake, make, install.
This explains the difference between Free Software movement and FOSS, you are never truly free with FOSS:
What is interesting in the above interview is that you will learn that Linux was initially proprietary software.
So we need to be clear, politically, using GNU/Linux is a political stance and therefore political views on different software has a presence in any discussion thread.
It is quite true that internal politics within development in Linux/GnuLinux are something users are affected by and discussions of which are beneficial to the users and members. This type of politics covers the very real human nature and interactions that lead to decision and policy making in GnuLinux that have a direct relation to the users.
It is unfortunate that such terms cross boundaries. Governmental Politics such as those covered by your link that I moderated have no place in any discussion thread on this particular forum.
Neither FOSS nor Gnu relate to Dr. Fauci, Cerns LHC experiment and the Illuminati New World Order.
Prior to that, it was a claim that the World Trade Center was "dustified" using reverse engineered alien technology.
Multiple claims about Windmill and 5G conspiracies.
There is a difference between posting meaningful and informative content and posting unsupported and misleading claims.
