They’re not all identical in features and function though. Nix is different from Gentoo which is different from RPM. And they’re all going to have drawbacks and in some cases, have complete showstoppers.
Portage/Aur: Not everyone is gonna compile things and if you say use the pre-built options, then this isn’t the right choice.
Debian/RPM: You’ll never get distro’s to agree to release names or contents, like glibc and ssl versions
Nix: Learning curve is murder. Not every app is made to be reproducible.
FlatPak/Snap/AppImage: Loses almost all the advantages of a distro that we take for granted: CVE patching, tested updates, etc.
This is a brief, maybe even unfair overview but it’s not as easy as “just pick one”.
And this ignores the huge pantheon of “language package managers” like pip, gem, npm, cargo, cpan, maven, etc^infinity. Ideally these would just be build dep managers but you get a lot of apps packaged and distributed this way too. Some distro’s/package systems bravely try to keep up but it’s a losing battle.
Why? Who decides? Who stops someone from introducing a new package manager? Why should a person developing a package manager be “stopped”?
I don’t agree.
Devs could just provide a Dockerfile containing the build environment and a script. That would pair nicely with CI and automated builds.
No need to restrict package managers.
Also, flatpak exists.
Let me add to context:
This developer hates the FOSS spirit & tells users to fuck off when they complain. There, done.
He took an open source project and made it source available. I don’t blame people for being upset.
As a linux user myself (arch) I wish the community would just pick a package manager and stick with it.
Seems contrary to the nature of the Linux scene tbh
They’re not all identical in features and function though. Nix is different from Gentoo which is different from RPM. And they’re all going to have drawbacks and in some cases, have complete showstoppers.
This is a brief, maybe even unfair overview but it’s not as easy as “just pick one”.
And this ignores the huge pantheon of “language package managers” like pip, gem, npm, cargo, cpan, maven, etc^infinity. Ideally these would just be build dep managers but you get a lot of apps packaged and distributed this way too. Some distro’s/package systems bravely try to keep up but it’s a losing battle.
Sounds idealistic and raises some questions.
Why? Who decides? Who stops someone from introducing a new package manager? Why should a person developing a package manager be “stopped”?
I don’t agree.
Devs could just provide a Dockerfile containing the build environment and a script. That would pair nicely with CI and automated builds. No need to restrict package managers. Also, flatpak exists.
Microsoft waiting in the wings to buy that package manager as soon as the community decides.