Re: Imagine how much time is wasted...
"Do you know why there are FlatPaks and Snaps?"
Yes, it's because of a rather hard engineering problem to do with application A and application B both depending on application C, but each depending on a different version. This is outside the scope of package managers, which track dependencies but cannot resolve conflicts in them, because they don't make choices for the users. This problem exists on all platforms, and containers is the least efficient way around it.
The traditional Unix solution is compiling from source, which (in theory) allows for static linking so applications A and B each get their own version of application C. Compiling from source also means stepping away from the package manager, with attendant problems around security updates and so on.
Windows *does* make choices for the users. So they came up with a different solution in side-by-side assemblies. This also has its problems, but those problems tend to crop up in ways that are mysterious for the end user. Windows users are long accustomed to "spookiness" in the OS. Things that worked yesterday don't work today, but not to worry it will be fixed tomorrow.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
