[lwf]

Almost all Linux distributions rebuild upstream software from source -- this ensures everything is built from the same toolchain (gcc/libc etc), and that the binaries distributed match the source.

It also allows for ease of patching in a stable release -- generally it's preferred to just fix specific high-impact bugs rather than moving to a new upstream version, which might introduce regressions.

(Context: I'm a Debian developer and on the Ubuntu MOTU team)

[digi_owl]

And then there is the whole dependencies shitstorm, were far too many upstreams have a bad habit of breaking APIs etc as they see fit.

There are ways to work around it, but it gets messy quickly. And rather than clean up their act they start championing things like Flatpak, that is basically a throwback to the DOS days of everything living in their own folder tree with a bit of souped up chroot thrown on top.

I really expect that if the likes of flatpak becomes mainstream in the Linux world having some flaw being found in a lib somewhere will produce a stampede of updates because every damn project crammed in a copy to make sure it was present.

[gerdesj]

"Almost all Linux distributions rebuild upstream software from source"

On Gentoo et al, the end user does the building. OK, yes the ebuilds are recipes but I've lost count of the times I've used epatch_user (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/patches). You have a near infinite choice of ways to destroy your system, what with USE flags, mixed stable/unstable and all the other crazy stuff. Despite that, my Gentoo systems have been surprisingly stable.

In winter an update world session on a laptop keeps you (very) warm 8)

(wrt "Context": Ta for your work)