I'm fine with the App system on the Mac. It's ultrasimple. Package management is a teeny bit simpler, but it's not enough for me to bother over. I'm not sure i

I'm fine with the App system on the Mac. It's ultrasimple. Package management is a teeny bit simpler, but it's not enough for me to bother over. I'm not sure it's actually simpler; as a software author, my experience has been: If I want to release something for the Mac, I post a dmg containing a dragable application; and even the most non-technical user can download and install it immediately. Sparkle provides automatic updates via my website; users gets the latest versions whenever they want them, I don't have to do anything complicated. If I want to release something for the UNIXes, I provide a set of autoconf scripts and a make-based build system (or one of the recent alternatives, or a Python egg, or a Ruby gem), hope that the package management systems pick it up during their next release cycle, wind up in an argument with Debian over OpenSSL+GPL licensing compatibility, and see my software get shipped with half the featured turned off and a ridiculous number of local hacks applied, including all-too-regularly replacement of a working library dependency with something that doesn't work (but Debian likes it more). The average end-user doesn't see my updates for months or years, the software is missing features and locally modified, and I have to wonder: Why couldn't I just give them something that they could drag to their applications folder?