A really big part of it is that the packaging situation is a big clusterfuck on python, and therefore people don't really mind packaging decisions related to th

A really big part of it is that the packaging situation is a big clusterfuck on python, and therefore people don't really mind packaging decisions related to them. Rubygems on the other hand is an entrenched standard in the Ruby world, and people really expect them to be the same everywhere. This make people notice shoddy packaging in a totally different way. This has become even more noticeable with bundler since suddenly people notice when the packagers have thrown compatibility out of the window. (I have more experience with rpm based distros, but I assume debian doesn't work too differently)