[javert]

Funny because I only care about Linux on the desktop and I don't have this problem, either.

He talks about a state explosion of packages and libraries, but in practice, I don't see that it matters.

Yes, there is technically a state explosion, so you can't test every possible combination of packages. But you don't need to because they don't interfere with one another much in practice.

I won't pronounce that as universally true (I suspect some people would strongly disagree), but that's been my experience.

[thrownaway122]

If you only need versions in your distro's repos then this is usually fine - although often the more obscure stuff is broken in e.g. Ubuntu repos. If you want a newer version? Things break fast.