Once you get used to this method of packaging it’s actually really empowering for the end user. You can download the source for anything in the system, modify it, recompile, and install it all with a standard set of commands (no one-off custom build steps for every package).
I feel it’s the closest thing to the spirit of “free software” we have today: software designed to empower the end user to read, understand, and modify their system without a huge amount of obfuscation.
It increases the burden on the packagers to reduce the burden on the users. I would be interested to see how often these features actually get used though. I wish distributions would put this front and center.
Once you get used to this method of packaging it’s actually really empowering for the end user. You can download the source for anything in the system, modify it, recompile, and install it all with a standard set of commands (no one-off custom build steps for every package).
I feel it’s the closest thing to the spirit of “free software” we have today: software designed to empower the end user to read, understand, and modify their system without a huge amount of obfuscation.
It increases the burden on the packagers to reduce the burden on the users. I would be interested to see how often these features actually get used though. I wish distributions would put this front and center.
https://wiki.debian.org/WhyDebian