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This is one of those rare times I'd say "no, that thing does not need to change." The strength of Linux is its lack of centralization with several strong contenders leading the pack. Packaging is not a problem for expert users, and casual users have options. I personally think flatpak and snap are polluters and wasteful, but haven't broken one of my systems in a while so I don't mind using them. Options for packaging benefits both the users and maintainers; only someone seeking to monetize that wants to consolidate. Before you know it, graphical installers will have ads. Screw em
I personally think flatpak and snap are polluters and wasteful, but haven’t broken one of my systems in a while so I don’t mind using them.
I'm in a same boat. I have this and that installed via flatpack/snap and they mostly work, but I don't like them in a principle. And, while they strictly speaking haven't broken anything the garage computer I'm writing this with has multiple pieces of software which is installed both via apt and via snap. The one from apt is obsolete/broken, so I should go trough and clean them up, but in the other hand the snap ones (signal mostly) complains every now and then that new version has been installed and that it'll restart automatically after x days. No matter how many times I run updates the message stays until it magically disappeares.
This installation was once xubuntu 16.04 and it's been upgraded with different hardware for years and until recently it was pretty sufficient to just open console now and then and run apt update && apt dist-upgrade. After that the system would be up to date, run browser and spotify just fine (that's what I need from a garage computer, play music and offer a way to quickly search whatever online to help with projects) but now it's in a state where I can't just let it do it's thing. It requires handholding and TLC more and more often and I don't like it. Just let me upgrade a system for decades which used to be possible (and maybe still is) with Debian.
But I'm getting older by the day, I used to have Debian installations which went trough 3-4 major releases without major hiccups and it was wonderful. I like when things just work and I don't need to pay attention to the operating system itself, it's just a platform for me to do whatever I need and the less it gets in the way the better. Of course things are better now than back when we had to build our own kernels, but I suppose some of you here are younger than 2.6.0 kernel, so maybe we'll not go that far into history.
Packaging is no problem at all. That stuff is done automatically nowadays. I'm not sure why that guy mentions that time and time again.