First of all, distro packages essentially always lag behind the released upstream versions, so you have to begin with figuring out which version the distro pack

First of all, distro packages essentially always lag behind the released upstream versions, so you have to begin with figuring out which version the distro packaged, and find documentation for that, include that version in all your questions to the mailing list for the library, and hope that you're not on a version so old that it's no longer supported upstream. Then there's the way distros like to make changes for "consistency" with the rest of their system. Command-line entry points get renamed or have options and behavior changed to reflect the distro's standards, but now the thing you're running isn't the thing upstream wrote or documented, so you're even more on your own if you hit trouble. Also, it's not unheard-of for distros to take something that's a single packaged entity upstream, and split it into multiple distro packages, possibly without making it entirely clear that to get full functionality you'll have to install multiple distro packages. And, again, this is specific to the distro and their choices, so of course upstream won't document it and may be just as baffled as you are when you ask why something that's important to you doesn't seem to be in the package you got. Finally, the Python ecosystem is built around the Python packaging and distribution toolchains. You're going to find plenty of expertise in things like using pip and virtual environments to develop and deploy Python, but all that goes out the window when you switch to using the distro package manager and packages. So you're giving up a lot of tooling built by and for Python engineers, for something which had to be a one-size-fits-all solution for the operating system it's bound to. So while you can do all right with system packages and tooling for quite a few use cases, the dangers aren't that far away and are ready to hurt you, badly, as soon as you stray just a little bit outside of what the distro optimized for, or need help with a package beyond what the distro and its packagers are able to provide.