lastweakness

npm is JS-specific

I don’t want to use a distro package manager for certain software because nearly every distro except Arch requires adding third party repositories which can stop getting updates at any second.

Don’t worry, I understand the intricacies of these problems a lot more deeply than you probably realise. As a developer, it can suck when your “hotfix” cools down by the time a distro gets around to packaging it. And as a packager, you’re human in the end. As a user though, you just want stuff to work.

As a longtime Linux user, this isn’t really a problem for me, none of this is. But what about a new user? We need to address these issues at some point if we want Linux to be truly user-friendly.

What’s a good package manager right now for stuff like this if i don’t want to use the distro package manager though? I want up to date versions of these tools, ideally shipped by the devs themselves, with easy removal and updates. Is there any right now? I think Homebrew is like that? But I wish it didn’t need creating an entire new user and worked on a user account basis.

In an ideal world, i would want to use these tools in such a way that I can uninstall them, including any tool data (cache, config, etc), and update them in a reliable manner. Most of these tools are also hellbent on creating a new “.<tool-name>” folder or file in the home folder ignoring the XDG spec.