Technology
klik did not "install" software in the traditional sense (i.e., it did not put files all over the place in the system). It used one .cmg file per application. Each one is self-contained: it includes all libraries the application depends on and that are not part of the base system. In this regard, it is similar to "application virtualization" or Portable applications. One can klik a file even if they are not a superuser, or they are using a live CD.
klik integrated with web browsers on the user's computer. Users downloaded and installed software by typing a URL beginning with klik://. This downloaded a klik "recipe" file, which was used to generate the .cmg file. In this way, one recipe could be used to supply packages to a wide variety of platforms.
klik files were often simpler than compiling and installing an application, as no installation actually took place. The .cmg file is a compressed image which is temporarily mounted to allow access to the program, but not having to extract the program or modify the underlying system. Currently only 8 klik programs can be run at once because of the limitation of mounting compressed images with the Linux kernel, unless FUSE is used. The file is remounted each time the program is run, meaning the user can remove the program by simply deleting the .cmg file.
Read more about this topic: Klik (packaging Method)
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“The successor to politics will be propaganda. Propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)