A sample journey when trying to install software:
- Try your distros repos, it’s either not there or an older version
- Oh wait, you need to add their repo to your list and try again
- Actually, they don’t have a repo, but you can install this deb/rpm from their site
- Nevermind, it actually needs to be installed with pip to get the latest version
- Or wait, it was actually a rust package and needs cargo
- Well, this package is available as a snap
- Screw it, I’ll just build it from source…. Except the dependencies I need take me through the entire journey again
It’s crazy with a large package like mesa. It uses meson, which requires it be installed via pip, and also needs rust which is best installed via a snap, but then there are dependencies it needs that require multiple paths…
On Windows: find the msi or exe and be done with it.
You need to be on a rolling or upstream adjacent distro that has the most recent and untested version of everything available. Sounds like you would break things though, as you’re unfamiliar with the how/why of package management in general.
Mesa is a base library for much larger systems at work. Your example of Windows just letting install something like this isn’t exactly possible. Seems you think Mesa is like a driver or similar. It is not.