An oft-heard complaint about Linux is that software distribution often takes several forms: a Windows version, a macOS version, and… a Debian version, an Ubuntu version, a Fedora version, a CentOS version, an openSUSE version… but these complaints miss the point. The true distributable form for Linux software, and rather for Unix software in general, is a .tar.gz file containing the source code.
Note: This article presumes that proprietary/nonfree software is irrelevant, and so should you.
That’s not to imply that end-users should take this tarball and run ./configure && make && sudo make install themselves. Rather, the responsibility for
end-user software distribution is on the distribution itself. That’s why we call
it a distribution. This relationship may feel like an unnecessary middleman to
the software developer who just wants to get their code into their user’s hands,
but on the whole this relationship has far more benefits than drawbacks.
As the old complaint would suggest, there are hundreds of variants of Linux alone, not to mention the BSD flavors and any novel new OS that comes out next week. Each of these environments has its own take on how the system as a whole should be organized and operate, and it’s a fools' errand for a single team to try and make sense of it all. More often than not, software which tries to field this responsibility itself sticks out like a sore thumb on the user’s operating system, totally flying in the face the conventions set out by the distribution.
Thankfully, each distro includes its own set of volunteers dedicated to this specific job: packaging software for the distribution and making sure it conforms to the norms of the target environment. This model also adds a set of checks and balances to the system, in which the distro maintainers can audit each other’s work for bugs and examine the software being packaged for anti-features like telemetry or advertisements, patching it out as necessary. These systems keep malware out of the repositories, handle distribution of updates, cryptographically verifying signatures, scaling the distribution out across many mirrors - it’s a robust system with decades of refinement.
The difference in trust between managed software repositories like Debian, Alpine Linux, Fedora, and so on; and unmanaged software repositories like PyPI, npm, Chrome extensions, the Google Play store, Flatpak, etc — is starkly obvious. Debian and its peers are full of quality software which integrates well into the host system and is free of malware. Unmanaged repositories, however, are constant sources for crapware and malware. I don’t trust developers to publish software with my best interests in mind, and developers shouldn’t ask for that level of trust. It’s only through a partnership with distributions that we can build a mutually trustworthy system for software distribution.
Some developers may complain that distros ship their software too slowly, but you shouldn’t sweat it. End-user distros ship updates reasonably quickly, and server distros ship updates at a schedule which meets the user’s needs. This inconsistent pace in release schedules among free software distributions is a feature, not a bug, and allows the system to work to the needs of its specific audience. You should use a distro that ships updates to you at the pace you wish, and let your users do the same.
So, to developers: just don’t worry about distribution! Stick a tarball on your release page and leave the rest up to distros. And to users: install packages from your distro’s repositories, and learn how its packaging process works so you can get involved when you find a package missing. It’s not as hard as it looks, and they could use your help. For my part, I work both as a developer, packager, and end-user, publishing my software as tarballs, packaging some of it up for my distro of choice, report bugs to other maintainers, and field requests from maintainers of other distros as necessary. Software distribution is a social system and it works.
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