4 ms·

On one hand I would like to agree with you, but on the other I'm reminded of all the update services running on my PC back when I used Windows and... no thanks.

• rektide 6y ago
  In Debian, there is a package management tool, apt. One can update all services, install packages &c through it. But it is a tool, not a store, not a repository. One points apt at whatever repositories they want. Thus folks like Ubuntu can fork Debian but use the same apt tool; create their own repository & point /etc/apt/sources.list at their repository rather than Debians. Apt goes further still. Debian doesn't/can't provide Google Chrome in their repos, but I can add a Google repository to /etc/apt/sources.list, and now my package manager can install Chrome. One can also do wild things like have both Debian & Ubuntu repositories listed in sources.list, and mix and match packages from the two, & manage/prioritize where to prefer to install from if unspecified. In contrast, we see other comments mentioning F-Droid (which requires elevated permissions most users don't have access to, i believe) as a good shop, versus Play Store. But even if that is the case, there are now multiple separate managers running on a system, each tied to their own repository, where-as by contrast, if apt were running on a phone, it could manage whatever set of repositories/stores the user selected, in a consistent central fashion. This model seems ideal to me. There are multiple repositories (stores) where one can install from, using a common, local package management tool that interfaces with these repositories. It has the upside of creating a good way to manage the system, & that manager can interface & harness many different sources of software concurrently.