Distributions

Posted Feb 3, 2025 18:14 UTC (Mon) by jzb (editor, #7867)
In reply to: Distributions by leephillips
Parent article: New horizons for Julia

I'm not sure useless is a, well, useful term here. Perhaps what you mean to say is that packages from the distribution are older than you or other users would prefer, or that they may be altered in some way that is less optimal for some or many users—for example, those who depend on / want a vanilla upstream version/experience.

If that is what's meant, I don't think that's controversial at all. I am quite happy to get the bulk of my software from my distribution of choice, but I do compile certain things (e.g., aerc) from source because I want the very, very latest as it's still pretty new and fixes and features land regularly. OTOH, I am not going to bother to compile VLC, Foliate, Pandoc, or ffmpeg myself unless there's a really good reason.