[freehunter]

I'm using 11.10 at home, and when I download a file from the Internet as a .deb, it will install from the Ubuntu Software Center (but not if an update is running). If I download it as anything else (.sh, etc), it needs to have the flag set manually. Unfortunately, quite a few installers come as .sh for universal compatibility.

Most recently, installing VMWare tools I ran into this. Granted most consumers won't be installing VMWare Tools, but you do run into the issue of "what format will your software ship in?" .deb? .rpm?

[icebraining]

I think the question is whether one should treat different distros as just different "flavors" of the same OS, or different OSs. I mean, no one complains about Mac OSX because their software packages don't work in other BSD based OSs.