BeholdenToAptGods™

A common rebuke from the Linux Youth is that its so hard to install software on non-Linux operating systems. As if it is so terribly difficult to search for program that you want, go to its website, download it and:

a) Run the install.exe if on Windows or
b) Drag an application bundle to your Apps folder on OS X.

Frequently responses will be of the form

sudo apt-get install python-django

I win.

This is an actual exampled culled from Linux Hater’s Blog. This also skips over the fact that most 'packages’ for linux are poorly named, non-descriptive, or having overlapping names. As such, the web search is required anyway, at which point, the user is then directed to go back to the repositories and attempt to find the program there. The whole supposition ignores the fact that you have to know how to use a terminal and what the associated commands do. Furthermore, an extra layer of potential incompetence has been added between the developer and the user. For instance you must trust your packagers to not do something stupid like entirely break the cryptography subsystem on your machine. Furthermore, most distributions have a stable release update policy which precludes packaging new software in all but the direst of circumstances. The end result being you must embark on the BiannualForcedDeathMarch in order to get recent versions of software. The only other option is to roll you entire toolchain from source, because once you step outside the repository’s walled garden, you no longer get any of the dependency management so oft touted as a strength of Linux.

See also, rpm its frontends yum, packagekit, and urpmi. Or other overblown dependency management systems.