Things have gotten so, so much better over the last 5 or 6 years.
Flatpak, appimage, docker are just brilliant.
I recently discovered nix and am in that honeymoon phase of trying to hit every nail with that hammer.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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This is why you use Arch/Nix because the package is likely in their repos.
The software probably still won't work, but you can waste more time on it.
Be me, build a Dockerfile to do all that shit in a nice CI package, still can't run it.
nix-shell is great too. sort of like a "demo" of something before actually committing to it or if you just want to use something one off without adding it to your config and rebuilding.
As a dev it's fantastic for testing also. can just try something on a bunch of browsers without actually installing the browser. love it.
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Oh sweet Jesus! LOL! This is me, though not with Linux, but trying to use Macports to get some damn program running and failing miserably because I couldn't get the permissions set on the dependencies correctly.
Rake right to the face. FML.
Don't install software outside of official repos or at least avoid doing it like the plague
Use tools like distrobox and toobx to install apps from other distros
Cue the Kelsey Grammer growl.
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?!
What I love is when you need a core part of the kernel and the only way to install it is by recompiling the kernel and you can't use bottles or docker for some obscure reason (yes this has happened to me no I wasn't happy.)
I was gonna get mad but then I continued reading.
LOL!
We've all been there..
Glad im not the only one. Thats one thing that makes me go man, people will never leave windows for this, this is insanely complex to juat install a program.
I find it fun to learn tho
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Are you using a debian-based distro, perhaps? (Espically if it's a stability-focused one)
It was on Fedora.
~~As a former Fedora user; if you know/want to know/learning how linux works, or if you are encountering this far too often, switch to EndeavourOS or Arch Linux if you're sure. Don't worry, 99% of things you care will work via Distrobox if you can't find it neither on the official repos nor the AUR (impossible.).~~
Edit: was
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Sorry, what does βnot installing somethingβ mean? Is it literal?
It means that I did not installed a certain software due to the dev not providing any binaries or at least making it a little bit easier to compile it myself.
Fyi, it wouldn't necessarily be better with a binary if you are missing dependencies, since it might have dynamically linked libraries (I'd say it probably does but tbh I'm not sure whether dynamic or static linked libraries are more common with Linux programs shared on the internet as my experience there is more with building them for work stuff rather than downloading and installing).
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Flatpak/flathub is your friend. I've been using Linux for 20+ years and I'm to a point where if it's not available as a deb, flatpak, system package or at the bare minimum an executable binary/script I just don't bother. Compiling should be done by the software vendor and not required of the user unless they specifically want or need to.
On Nixos
No nixpkg Make flake
damn. that's literally me.
I at times have to install completely undocumented software. I love ccmake as it lists all available options. I guess there are other ways, but that makes it so easy.
Then it's just a couple of days figuring out all necessary libraries.
No, then you fix the code to work with your current system libraries and upstream the patch and version bump. This happens less on Arch, BTW ;-)