I know there are ways to install software outside of aptitude on debian/ubuntu, (add repo, or build, or download binary, or possibly flatpak/snap/etc).
But being able to download *.deb files was one of the nicest aspect of using a debian based distros and now I’m seeing more and more projects include all distros except deb files.
Someone correct me but I vaguely recall that distributing debs is no longer recommended by debian itself?
- Am I wrong, and have I only co-incidentally stumbled on projects that don’t distribute debs?
- I am right and this seems like a mis-step, removing one of the most beginner friendly features that helped propagate debian based distros?
Flamesuit on.
From an app developer and a distro maintainer point of view snaps/flatpacks are just better in almost every regard. It seems insane that each distro spends time building and maintaining packages that should just be in a container and ready to go.
There are some disadvantages but would you rather the developers spent time fixing bugs and adding cool features or would you rather they spend their time packaging stuff up to support half a dozen different distro packaging formats. These are the choices devs are having to make but there’s no need- put it in a container, have a stable environment that runs everywhere, done.
Why should they even package it at all? Just distribute the source code and let the distributors handle it themselves.