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That’s naive. Most users want to use a given piece of software. If they can’t, they usually consider that a defect of the software in question. The users that k

That’s naive. Most users want to use a given piece of software. If they can’t, they usually consider that a defect of the software in question. The users that know and care enough to complain to their distro maintainers are not representative enough and are rare enough to make this a laggy at best, nonfunctional at worst (see TFA’s mention of having to package a bunch of dependency libs as their own packages) approach. Distro maintainer curation is a godsend for security and reliability. Distro maintainers and people who work with them to get things packaged are heroes. But let’s not pretend that maintainer curation is something the average user trying to run a new piece of software cares about.

embedding-shape 2mo ago
> Most users want to use a given piece of software. If they can’t, they usually consider that a defect of the software in question. You somehow seem to be under the impression that all users are the same, which evidently they're not, then we wouldn't have many distributions. Of course, most macOS and Windows users think exactly like how you outline. But the typical Debian, Ubuntu or Arch user don't think like that, as they typically understand what kind of environment and ecosystem they're in, where they don't expect every software developer to understand every distribution. > But let’s not pretend that maintainer curation is something the average user trying to run a new piece of software cares about. What in my comments gave you the impression that I'm trying to argue for this at all? Of course they don't care, otherwise they'd be maintainers themselves.
- zbentley 2mo ago
  > What in my comments gave you the impression that I'm trying to argue for this at all? Of course they don't care, otherwise they'd be maintainers themselves. You said: > When something isn't packaged for these users but they feel like it's popular/useful enough to be, they'll open a request with their distribution for someone to maintain that I don’t think that happens nearly often or quickly enough for most users to be satisfied. Hence why so much software is released through tertiary PPAs or .deb download links and so on.

embedding-shape 2mo ago

> Most users want to use a given piece of software. If they can’t, they usually consider that a defect of the software in question. You somehow seem to be under the impression that all users are the same, which evidently they're not, then we wouldn't have many distributions. Of course, most macOS and Windows users think exactly like how you outline. But the typical Debian, Ubuntu or Arch user don't think like that, as they typically understand what kind of environment and ecosystem they're in, where they don't expect every software developer to understand every distribution. > But let’s not pretend that maintainer curation is something the average user trying to run a new piece of software cares about. What in my comments gave you the impression that I'm trying to argue for this at all? Of course they don't care, otherwise they'd be maintainers themselves.

zbentley 2mo ago
> What in my comments gave you the impression that I'm trying to argue for this at all? Of course they don't care, otherwise they'd be maintainers themselves. You said: > When something isn't packaged for these users but they feel like it's popular/useful enough to be, they'll open a request with their distribution for someone to maintain that I don’t think that happens nearly often or quickly enough for most users to be satisfied. Hence why so much software is released through tertiary PPAs or .deb download links and so on.