[lmm]

I think the real answer is that distro packaging sucks; it tends to involve arcane distro-specific tools and introduce as many or more bugs than it fixes (with the added problem of playing hot potato with the bug reports), on top of delaying updates. Really, what do you gain by using distro packages? (I know the answer is supposedly that you get a set of well-tested versions of your applications that play nice with each other, but that's rarely been delivered in practice)

[stonogo]

I don't disagree with that assessment, but I'm not sure docker's any different. It's just a different arcane set of tools that introduces as many failure points as it fixes (with the added problem of supply chain attacks) on top of having to use all the distro stuff anyway. So, while I use the hell out of docker, I don't really regard it as an improvement on (or really an alternative to) distro packages. I think it's a better tool for solving complex deployments, but e.g. irssi isn't really in that camp.

[lmm]

I think that like it or not, Docker has managed to win mindshare in a way that no single distro's package management ever did. Application developers could never get away with publishing only RPMs or only debs (and whether the same deb would work on Debian and Ubuntu was always a risky question), but everyone runs Docker; even the alternatives like Podman or Moby feel the need to be compatible with existing Docker packages.

[stonogo]

Yeah, that's probably true among developers. Among other classes of users, providing a deb or an rpm (or some combination of package manager formats) has been pretty normal. Enterprise software like Slack has been doing this for ages, Microsoft distributed Teams that way for years, the CUDA stack is rpm/deb, etc. Outside of the dev world, docker is basically a signal that your devops people should be on the project. The most common question used to be "why no installer" but nowadays users just use the "app store" (Gnome's Software or KDE's Discover) to Get Stuff, and wouldn't be able to tell you if asked whether what they just installed was a native package or a Flatpak.

I do agree that Docker is ubiquitous in the development world, but I think the fraction of people even aware enough of packaging to have an opinion is vanishingly small.