You can always do everything yourself, and given that you can add repositories and the app handles it transparently that's a great alternative. That's assuming,

You can always do everything yourself, and given that you can add repositories and the app handles it transparently that's a great alternative. That's assuming, of course, that you do have the expertise to run one. That certainly isn't true for most app developers I know, and that's logical - it's not their field. It's definitely the best alternative, but that doesn't make it a good alternative right now.