Error when trying to download metadata - Page 2

Quoth · 11-25-2023, 01:44 PM

I've never had a problem with Calibre on Linux Mint with Mate desktop.

Used Redhat in late 1990s, eventually went to Ubuntu and then over 10 years ago to Mint (due to Ubuntu getting silly on GUI).

Used Windows as Main GUI from 1992 to Dec 2016 (Win 3.x, NT 3.51, NT4, XP, Win7. The Win9x only for games).

I don't think supporting every Linux / BSD / UNIX distro is possible. The rot started for QT when Nokia bought Trolltech. A lot of talent left then.

dunhill · 11-25-2023, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

I've never had a problem with Calibre on Linux Mint with Mate desktop.

Used Redhat in late 1990s, eventually went to Ubuntu and then over 10 years ago to Mint (due to Ubuntu getting silly on GUI).

Used Windows as Main GUI from 1992 to Dec 2016 (Win 3.x, NT 3.51, NT4, XP, Win7. The Win9x only for games).

I don't think supporting every Linux / BSD / UNIX distro is possible. The rot started for QT when Nokia bought Trolltech. A lot of talent left then.

Well, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and before the rumors of the disappearance of Ubuntu, it has once again developed a version based on Debian.
LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for "Linux Mint Debian Edition".
Its goal is to ensure that Linux Mint can continue to offer the same user experience if Ubuntu were to ever disappear. It allows us to evaluate how much we depend on Ubuntu and how much work such an event would entail. LMDE is also one of our development goals, as such it ensures that the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu.

kovidgoyal · 11-25-2023, 11:08 PM

Well, I am just grumpy as there have been a lot of issues post the 7.0 release, that were not issues in actual calibre code. I have had to investigate bugs/incompatibilities in all sorts of software from Qt to OpenSSL to Wayland and I am rather tired of finding and fixing things in other peoples' systems, it takes a disproportionate amount of effort. And Linux is particularly egregious for this, because of its diversity, and the constant pointless churn in its basic infrastructure. There is a lot of meaningless variation between Linux distros. In Linux land people just keep re-inventing the same things in slightly different forms and all this pointless churn imposes high costs on anybody trying to build anything based on their systems. It's a real pity Linux userland didnt learn from the Linux kernel the importance of stability in external APIs.

For this latest case as best as I can determine, *only* Fedora/RedHat and its derivatives suffer from making it impossible to use unmodified upstream openssl libraries on their distros. All other distros do not have this problem. But because of Fedora/RedHat it is impossible for me to allow openssl to read the system configuration, which means it is impossible for calibre users to configure their openssl system wide and have calibre pick up that configuration. As it is there is a kludge in calibre code (put in way back in the calibre 2.x era again for Fedora) where at startup I set an openssl env var so that at least it uses the system root certificates. I hate having to impose that kind of limitation for no good reason.

Hopefully things will stabilise now. I am planning to take a break from dealing with these problems in other peoples systems type issues to just write code, which usually cheers me up

DNSB · 11-26-2023, 12:42 AM

But sadly, while Apple and Microsoft may break calibre running on older versions out of a lack of desire to support older OS versions, their software is pretty consistent (Sonoma is Sonoma, Windows 11 is Windows 11 for example).

In contrast, every bleeping Linux distro seems to have "we did it our way" as their mantra so guaranteeing software will run across multiple distros is a total PITA. One horrible example I lived through was when the devs updated the web servers on a Thursday and we ended up with no corporate web services for a couple of days. The debacle was due to changes made in a couple of modules and one of the devs was able to find more information from either Squid or NGINX's site (I can't remember which it was) on the fixes needed.

Admittedly, this also resulted in stricter controls over the devs with changes to ensure that they know that corporate doctrine on change control such as testing on the test servers first—which they hadn't bothered to do—and make sure you have a full bare metal backup before any updates/non-reversible changes are not suggestions and not following them was cause for termination.

eschwartz · 11-26-2023, 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Philantrop

No, Kovid, you can blame distros (too old, too new, too incompetent) all you want but the core of the issues was, is and will always be this:

Quote:

calibre comes with its own bundled dependencies

(Quoting yourself from https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=256095)

It is neither innovative nor weird for software to both provide its own precompiled binaries and support building from source. Please stop blaming software developers for their ignominious crime in doing so.

It is, as it turns out, neither ignominious nor a crime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And I am fast approaching the the point where I am just going to stop supporting Linux all together. It's not worth the hassle. Linux and its twelve users generate more problems than the other several million users put together. So tell me some more about how this is calibre's fault, PLEASE.

Please -- before doing this, consider, instead, updating the linux installer to detect when it is being run on a fedora derivative and emitting a fatal error message:

"Fedora is a pox upon the open source landscape, continually defaces and destroys downstream software, and refuses to be compatible with anything anywhere. Then it goes ahead and breaks the software it packages itself, through a wide variety of insane decisions. Calibre does not officially support Fedora. Please report a bug to the fedora developers, or go use the undoubtedly misbegotten version of calibre which is distributed via rpm. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=357381 for more details."

This is absolutely a Fedora problem and giving up on Fedora is a reasonable approach to take. John Schember wrote about this a decade ago w.r.t. sigil as well (and then sigil apparently decided the correct solution was to be hostile to the entirety of linux, which is... a decision, certainly).

Seems like the correct solution is to give blame where blame is due, and leave it at that.

BetterRed · 11-26-2023, 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

… See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=357381 for more details."

Recusive [sic] link

BR

DNSB · 11-26-2023, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Recusive [sic] link.

Not if it was being emitted by the calibre installer detecting an attempt to install calibre on Fedora/Red Hat Linux which—I believe—was @eschwartz's intention.

kovidgoyal · 11-26-2023, 05:08 AM

Rest easy, I am not dropping Linux support, if for no other reason than that I still personally use Linux, and it would feel wrong to me to not support the OS I use in calibre. But yes, I am utterly fed up of these types of issues, as I said I need a sabbatical to recharge and just write code

I have some nice deep programming problems in my queue in my other major project, kitty, so I think I will focus on that for a while.

Quoth · 11-26-2023, 05:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

But yes, I am utterly fed up of these types of issues, as I said I need a sabbatical to recharge and just write code

You sound like you need a holiday!

Quoth · 11-26-2023, 05:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

…
Please -- before doing this, consider, instead, updating the linux installer to detect when it is being run on a fedora derivative and emitting a fatal error message:

"Fedora is a pox upon the open source landscape, continually defaces and destroys downstream software, and refuses to be compatible with anything anywhere. Then it goes ahead and breaks the software it packages itself, through a wide variety of insane decisions. Calibre does not officially support Fedora. Please report a bug to the fedora developers, or go use the undoubtedly misbegotten version of calibre which is distributed via rpm. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=357381 for more details."

This is absolutely a Fedora problem and giving up on Fedora is a reasonable approach to take.

…

Seems like the correct solution is to give blame where blame is due, and leave it at that.

Maybe add Wayland too. It seems not even Beta yet. Other than annoy people and have "shiny", I can't see the point of it.

11-26-2023, 12:42 AM	#19
DNSB Bibliophagist Posts: 46,522 Karma: 169115146 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Vancouver Device: Kobo Sage, Libra Colour, Lenovo M8 FHD, Paperwhite 4, Tolino epos	But sadly, while Apple and Microsoft may break calibre running on older versions out of a lack of desire to support older OS versions, their software is pretty consistent (Sonoma is Sonoma, Windows 11 is Windows 11 for example). In contrast, every bleeping Linux distro seems to have "we did it our way" as their mantra so guaranteeing software will run across multiple distros is a total PITA. One horrible example I lived through was when the devs updated the web servers on a Thursday and we ended up with no corporate web services for a couple of days. The debacle was due to changes made in a couple of modules and one of the devs was able to find more information from either Squid or NGINX's site (I can't remember which it was) on the fixes needed. Admittedly, this also resulted in stricter controls over the devs with changes to ensure that they know that corporate doctrine on change control such as testing on the test servers first—which they hadn't bothered to do—and make sure you have a full bare metal backup before any updates/non-reversible changes are not suggestions and not following them was cause for termination. Last edited by DNSB; 11-26-2023 at 12:47 AM.

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11-25-2023, 01:44 PM	#16
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,214 Karma: 105212135 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	I've never had a problem with Calibre on Linux Mint with Mate desktop. Used Redhat in late 1990s, eventually went to Ubuntu and then over 10 years ago to Mint (due to Ubuntu getting silly on GUI). Used Windows as Main GUI from 1992 to Dec 2016 (Win 3.x, NT 3.51, NT4, XP, Win7. The Win9x only for games). I don't think supporting every Linux / BSD / UNIX distro is possible. The rot started for QT when Nokia bought Trolltech. A lot of talent left then.

11-25-2023, 11:08 PM	#18
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,397 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Well, I am just grumpy as there have been a lot of issues post the 7.0 release, that were not issues in actual calibre code. I have had to investigate bugs/incompatibilities in all sorts of software from Qt to OpenSSL to Wayland and I am rather tired of finding and fixing things in other peoples' systems, it takes a disproportionate amount of effort. And Linux is particularly egregious for this, because of its diversity, and the constant pointless churn in its basic infrastructure. There is a lot of meaningless variation between Linux distros. In Linux land people just keep re-inventing the same things in slightly different forms and all this pointless churn imposes high costs on anybody trying to build anything based on their systems. It's a real pity Linux userland didnt learn from the Linux kernel the importance of stability in external APIs. For this latest case as best as I can determine, only Fedora/RedHat and its derivatives suffer from making it impossible to use unmodified upstream openssl libraries on their distros. All other distros do not have this problem. But because of Fedora/RedHat it is impossible for me to allow openssl to read the system configuration, which means it is impossible for calibre users to configure their openssl system wide and have calibre pick up that configuration. As it is there is a kludge in calibre code (put in way back in the calibre 2.x era again for Fedora) where at startup I set an openssl env var so that at least it uses the system root certificates. I hate having to impose that kind of limitation for no good reason. Hopefully things will stabilise now. I am planning to take a break from dealing with these problems in other peoples systems type issues to just write code, which usually cheers me up

11-26-2023, 05:08 AM	#23
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,397 Karma: 27756918 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Rest easy, I am not dropping Linux support, if for no other reason than that I still personally use Linux, and it would feel wrong to me to not support the OS I use in calibre. But yes, I am utterly fed up of these types of issues, as I said I need a sabbatical to recharge and just write code I have some nice deep programming problems in my queue in my other major project, kitty, so I think I will focus on that for a while.

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