Post #3276457

2026-04-30 07:53 UTC

@vwbusguy@mastodon.online @bookwar@floss.social @tragivictoria@mastodon.catgirl.cloud I disagree with this definition tbh. A distribution is anything that distributes different pieces of upstream software without being controlled by upstream. You can break upstream software even if no package manager is involved. Think about it from upstream's point of view: If someone packages my software, why would I care if it is distributed to people with a package manager or in a bundle? Someone is still packaging my software and potentially breaking it or making changes to it that I never intended.

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@tragivictoria@mastodon.catgirl.cloud 2026-04-30 08:05

@jcm @vwbusguy@mastodon.online @bookwar@floss.social by this definition Flathub and Homebrew are also distros. Technically it's correct, by I doubt most people think of those as distros. Think about it from upstream's point of view: If someone packages my software, why would I care if it is distributed to people with a package manager or in a bundle? Someone is still packaging my software and potentially breaking it or making changes to it that I never intended. Right, but in case of bash, coreutils etc can't really distribute themselves. Apps, on the other hand, have a lot of tools these days to do it. CLI programs have nix and brew (although both of them suck and are worse than flatpaks sadly), so they can also distribute themselves. If upstream can distribute themselves there isn't much sense in duplicating that work.

Open ##3276458