Depends on the package manager. It’s probably easy on Debian, but more difficult on rolling releases, mostly because of dependency hell. Binary distributed software is also harder to integrate in a build system and cross-compilation to a different architecture is not possible.
You shouldn’t need to cross compile, as they will provide the binaries for systems they support. I’m not sure what integration with build systems it might need, but I feel like a package manager should not have this limitation. I use NixOS Unstable, the rolling release branch, and have many packages that are distributed as binaries, either due to being closed source or having issues preventing them from being built with Nix.
Regarding the cost of the search engine, I don’t care about all the things you get. I just want a search engine and for a reasonable price compared to the price of their “all of them at once, I suppose” bundle.
That’s perfectly fair. I felt ok with spending $10 a month on the search, even before they started adding more features and services to it. I believe that the $5 option used to offer 500 searches, which felt more fair, but I guess that wasn’t sustainable.
Thanks for the links! I think their wording on why they don’t want to open source the project is quite slimy when it just requires them to give ship users the source code tarballs alongside the binaries.
You shouldn’t need to cross compile, as they will provide the binaries for systems they support.
Well it’s unlikely a company would support every possible system in the world. The best one can do is using something like static linking/flatpak/nix. But that means not using shared libraries which can make software start slower. This would bother me for a daily-driver browser. I guess it does not bother nix users like you but I was thinking they would be potentially missing out on some Linux users. Maybe it isn’t really a significant portion that would care.
I felt ok with spending $10
I guess I would be too but in the context of their offerings, it’s kinda off-putting for me.
The FAQ explains it better than I will:
You shouldn’t need to cross compile, as they will provide the binaries for systems they support. I’m not sure what integration with build systems it might need, but I feel like a package manager should not have this limitation. I use NixOS Unstable, the rolling release branch, and have many packages that are distributed as binaries, either due to being closed source or having issues preventing them from being built with Nix.
That’s perfectly fair. I felt ok with spending $10 a month on the search, even before they started adding more features and services to it. I believe that the $5 option used to offer 500 searches, which felt more fair, but I guess that wasn’t sustainable.
Thanks for the links! I think their wording on why they don’t want to open source the project is quite slimy when it just requires them to give ship users the source code tarballs alongside the binaries.
Well it’s unlikely a company would support every possible system in the world. The best one can do is using something like static linking/flatpak/nix. But that means not using shared libraries which can make software start slower. This would bother me for a daily-driver browser. I guess it does not bother nix users like you but I was thinking they would be potentially missing out on some Linux users. Maybe it isn’t really a significant portion that would care.
I guess I would be too but in the context of their offerings, it’s kinda off-putting for me.