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.
I agree…too many choices isnt always good.
Very hard to explain to a new user too.
“Wait , so what’s a snap? This site only has flatpak. Why can’t I change permissions? Oh I need flatseal which is separate ? What is this .deb file? This one says I need to compile from source for my distro…I installed a program but I can’t find it in my program list, where did it go?”
Etc. Just to install something. Its a little silly.