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tob
@tob

I need to fuss for a moment about the impenetrable nature of github. I see REALLY promising tools and alternatives to things like YouTube and other bigger sites that are on monopolistic rampages BUT, to the layman that shit is a different language. I can work my way around a fair bit of technology, I'm not inept but I am aware that my depth of knowledge is still pretty surface level. So, when I open something that is a possible youtube alternative and see this:

and then the install instructions are like this:
Its no wonder why there isn't mass adoption for using alternatives.

I'm not saying this isn't impossible, I'm not saying its unlearnable, but as someone who is starting to look into alternatives for The Usual Suspects, it is discouraging. I know alternatives will also not have the inherent creature comforts that a lot of people are used to, but so much of the stuff that's on github feels out of reach or unobtainable cause I don't have something that can run a certain code or can't parse out which parts of code need to be edited to get something to function properly. I just dont know these things and finding people to ask feels equally impossible sometimes. Hell, even people who DO use github for stuff say it's whack how stuff is laid out sometimes.
Also, the one I used in particular, this isn't a jab specifically at them, it's just the site as a whole, I've run into so many instances of wanting to try something and being unable or incapable because I'm missing some fine print Somewhere that says I should be able to run this thing but for now it remains feeling like a 50ft wall when I have a 5ft ladder.


Lexie-Plays-Fast
@Lexie-Plays-Fast

GitHub is the way it is because it is not designed as a platform for distributing software to users of software. GitHub Releases can be used as something of a CDN, to be sure, but the overall function of GitHub is to enable developers of software to collaborate on developing software.

If you find yourself on GitHub (outside of the Releases page for a project), one of a few things might have happened:

  1. You might have discovered whatever project you are looking for through a side channel. Instead of their project page (in this case and for example Invidious.io) your search engine or some link on Discord has led you past the intended entry point, and into the repo. To figure out if this is the case, the best path is usually to search engine the project name and look for a project page.

  2. The project is not ready for prime time. The developers do not consider a friendly entry point to matter, because in their opinion the software is not ready for use. This will usually not be stated explicitly anywhere, other than maybe some Discord chat in a non-public Discord, so context clues need to be taken into account — if searching for the project page in step one fails, this is often why.

  3. The project is not software intended for end users; it's not designed to be run on your home computer, possibly even not your personal web page. It's what we might call Enterprise Software. Again, using Invidious as an example, this is what is going on here. Invidious is not an App what lets you watch the YouTubes, it's server software that downloads and distributes video files through a web client, which is to say: It's doing something very complicated.

And here's the thing: What do you mean when you say "youtube alternative"?

That's not a trivial question! YouTube isn't a simple piece of software, it's a series of tools in a chain.

YouTube ReVanced, Invidious.io, Vimeo, Twitch.tv and Nebula could all be described as alternatives to YouTube, depending on what you mean by that, and they all do completely different things.

Apps, in the modern sense, are icebergs — they are the protrusions of extremely complicated systems into our phones, packaged in a neat little way that make them seem as simple things, when they very much are not. I'm using YouTube as an example here, because the original post was about Invidious, but this is true of just about any App, including, naturally, GitHub.

The solution?

Well, there isn't really one. Making and using software is complicated, and packaging it into Apps only helps so much.

What will help, though, is to take a step back and clearly think about and articulate what you mean when you say you want an alternative to whatever App is on a monopolistic rampage, because "I want an alternative to YouTube." (or App XYZ) is, in isolation, not really an actionable sentiment.

All of that said, go to the root of the repository and search the page for "Releases", and if you're lucky, you might find something neatly packaged up.


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in reply to @tob's post:

i don't know why programmers are so oblivious to the fact that average users just want a binary. all anyone wants is a web page with a big obvious download button labeled with their OS, and it downloads an installer/portable executable they can Just Double Click And It Works. you can keep all the other stuff, it just shouldn't be the first thing people see.

but they're.... containers. why can't you download the container file, double click it, and it be running? why do I have to man docker, the UI should be self-demonstrating.

windows has a "service manager", some inscrutable system-administrator-side UX written for Microsoft Management Console, but ... it works? it has the information and the tool buttons needed to work with the things! it's ugly, definitely not "user" friendly, but it works.

Linux, on the other hand, expects you to know how to man systemctl and write a systemd unit file from scratch. Why?

Nobody's writing .reg files from scratch and merging their hives by hand. There's no C:\Windows\System32\registry.d\. You have a Registry Editor. We use tools, we're not mortaring the bricks with our fingers, we have a trowel. Not Linux, though. You stick your fingers in the cement, "as god intended" and you had better damn well like it

i'd love that, that's the dream we'd been sold, but were that easy it would have already happened. there's things working on it like runtipi and the other selfhosting... frameworks, but they've got their own faults.

I hope something better can exist.

As a professional who gets paid to touch that Windows service manager panel... It does not actually work, all the buttons and statuses are lies, and attempting to make software, even software written by large companies with the explicit goal of working as a service, run as a Windows service is virtually impossible to do well. Notably, the way it tracks process dependencies is not really sufficient to ensure everything starts up in the right order -- so you can have a webapp that starts before the DB, crashes, and then never recovers. As for regedit... from the perspective of trying to make reproducible machine configurations, regedit is sticking your fingers in the undocumented, constantly-changing, impossible-to-version cement. I can back up and restore a set of config files independent of the underlying OS; I really wish that was the case for the registry.

lol, yeah. if it doesnt say right in the readme.md a link to the website where they put binaries, or if there isnt anything in the releases section, then it probably wasnt intended to be used by anyone that doesnt have the technical expertise to build it from source in the first place

FWIW runtipi simplifies a lot of this, especially if you're running it on a local network.

it on its own may be annoying to set up, but after that each selfhosted thing it supports is installed via it's package manager, which does all the docker config for you.

but you're not technically supposed to be running an invidious instance as an end user, even tho it's possible, there's a list of already propped up instances

tbh it's a website for programmers. if you're not a programmer and someone is directing you to github then probably they shouldn't be doing that, unless maybe they're linking to a "releases" page

but yeah also running websites is a huge fucking pain in the ass timesink, i don't even like doing it any more