APT sucks. It fucking sucks.

There. I said it. I've been using Ubuntu for two years, and I keep hearing the praise of apt being sung over and over, and you know what? It SUCKS. It's supposed to keep everything up to date, which would be great, but a) no one maintains ANYTHING in the god damn repositores, and b) distributions FREEZE most programs against backports to PREVENT you ON PURPOSE from running the latest version, *just in case* it fucks with something else in the system.

I just downloaded the newest version of ecksdee, thinking I'd sit down and burn half an hour playing a fun open source game. Turns out I've got to compile the thing. Alright, no problem, ./configure... needs Crystal Space. Great, that's in the repositories! An apt-get later, I find out version 1.0 is in the repositories, and the game needs 1.0.1. So I need to compile that too!

This thing has been compiling for a solid 25 minutes now. I've never seen something take this long to compile.

Over the two years I've been using Ubuntu, I've had to compile from source *COUNTLESS* programs, because nobody puts the fucking new versions in the repositories. Why not? How the fuck are we supposed to use it if everything is out of date? What kind of motivation is it for developers to improve their software if it's such a pain in the ass for us to get the new versions?

It's gotten to the point where when I want to try out some small game or application like ecksdee, I first try the Windows version in Wine because the Linux version is ALWAYS such a god damn pain in the ass.

And before some fucker mentions Debian Unstable, yes it avoids the problems of distributions freezing packages, but it doesn't fix the problem of people actually updating the repos. And no, I don't want to use Gentoo because it's TOO FUCKING HARD. I shouldn't have to assemble my car from scratch just to put a new set of goddamn tires on it.

>>4
No shit, I'm well aware of the fact that these packages are done for free. That's kind of my point. People throw together their own installers in seconds for Windows programs, but because of the myriad of Linux distributions, the complicated and unfriendly procedures for making .debs, the bureaucracy necessary for getting it into stable backport repositories (or the difficulty maintaining your own repository), no one bothers for Debian-based machines. Top it off with the existence of Alien, and developers only bother making rpms, letting apt users fend for themselves.

Just look at Pidgin for example. It's STILL not in the 7.04 repositories, despite having been released nearly two months ago.

>>5
Yes, because `./configure && make` always works flawlessly. Except when it doesn't, which is pretty much always. Take for example, oh, I don't know, Pidgin. What a nightmare to compile. Or Crystal Space, for example; it took over half an hour, and finally crashed. I asked the devs on IRC how to fix it and they had no idea what was wrong.