[palata]

They do more than that. For instance, they can be swapped easily. Think for instance a security library being updated by the distro security team. It also makes it easier to depend on an LGPL library, nicely allowing the users to modify the LGPL library without having to recompile your program.

[zer00eyz]

>>> Think for instance a security library being updated by the distro security team.

And when your distro doesn't update? When the distro is slow to change?

Flatpak, Appimage, Snaps (why?)... upstream devs are bypassing distro maintainers in a lot of cases.

[palata]

I am not saying that they solve all problems in the world. I am just saying that they have merits.

In your particular example, if you are not happy with your distro, you are free to find another one. Some distros are extremely fast to change.

> upstream devs are bypassing distro maintainers in a lot of cases

IMO, for open source projects, upstream devs should not distribute their library. They should let package maintainers do it for their distro.

[forgotmyinfo]

Then there's probably a reason, like the changes haven't been tested yet or verified to make sure they don't FUBAR your machine. It's okay to go a little slower to ensure reliability. Plus, do you really want the latest bugs in HEAD anyway?