[uecker]

The solution exists, and those are curated package repositories as we have in Linux distributions. In C I can simply install a -dev package and use some library which sees some quality control and security updates from the distribution.

The problem is that the UNIX shell model got very successful and is now also used on other platforms with poor package management, so all the language-level packaging system were created instead. But those did not learn from the lessons of Linux distributions. Cargo is particularly bad.

[kibwen]

> But those did not learn from the lessons of Linux distributions. Cargo is particularly bad.

I recall a decade ago listening to native app developers lamenting how web pages were inferior to native apps and gnashing their teeth at why browsers wouldn't learn the lessons of native apps. It was, and remains, a shocking display of self-unawareness to fail to understand why web pages, despite doing many things worse than native apps, managed to do blow native apps out of the water when it comes to doing the things that actually matter to users. This is how it feels listening to the above comment; you have failed to reflect on why both programming language authors and programming language users were pushed to using language-specific package managers in the first place, and you have failed to put forth any improvements to OS-level package managers that would allow them to address those underlying flaws.

[marcus_holmes]

TFA is literally talking about vulnerabilities in Linux packages. There are gajillions of them. Curated package repositories are not solving this problem.

[uecker]

It talks about "installing software". You should definitely install updates from your Linux distribution and installing new packages from a curated repository is certainly not worse than having software already installed. Reducing the footprint is always a good idea though. Installing software from random uncurated sources is generally risky.

[MSFT_Edging]

I think curated package repositories solve a problem, but not all of them.

For example, I'm not sure if the world of windows freeware ever moved past this, but very often, the home page for a freeware package will look nearly identical to a page set up to deliver malware. Every package you download you wonder "is this the legit version?". Even push it further, there were multiple examples of sites that were previously trusted for software downloads(SourceForge and the installer debacle) that began packaging spyware or adware into downloads.

With either delivery method, you're not quite safe from supply chain attacks, but with the curated repo, you at least have a single source of packages where you can trust it 99% of the time.