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.
If you’re on debian I HIGHLY suggest utilizing the PikaOS repos. I have it on another machine and I have yet to not been able to find anything. great search tool here: https://packages.pika-os.com/
It’s by far the best debian distro I’ve ever used and while sure it’s made for gaming, it’s fast and I have yet to have any issues with it. Plus their pikman package manager has distrobox built into it so in the rare case I can’t find something via debian I can just find it in an arch package or on the AUR or even on Fedora.
No, don’t do that. That’s how you break your system:
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Don.27t_make_a_FrankenDebian
It looks like pika os is based off of debian sid, which is not compatible with debian stable.
If you want newer packages on debian stable, try backports or experimental, which target the debian repos and are guaranteed to be compatible and explicitly tested against with debian stable
Otherwise, it’s best to switch to a distro or release (like switiching to debian sid. Don’t use testing though). Or you can use distrobox/containers.
Thank you for this, I immediately thought of Don’t Break Debian, when I saw that reply.