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I don't want software on my computer, that just downloads and installs random stuff. This is the job of the OS in particular the package manager.
You're welcome to live in the 90s dark ages, I feel this attitude and the shape of the old linux distros like Debian that laboriously re-package years-old software have been one of the biggest failures of open source and squandered untold hours of human effort. It's a model that works okay for generic infrastructure but requires far too much labor and moves far too slowly with quite a poor experience for end users and developers. Why else would all modern software development (going back to perl's cpan package manager in 1995) route around it?
Do you not use non-OS package managers?

If not, do you develop software with source dependencies (go, java, node, rust, python)? If so, how do you handle acquiring those dependencies—by hand or using a tool?

> Do you not use non-OS package managers?

Mostly no, sometimes I give up and still use pip as a separate user.

> If not, do you develop software with source dependencies (go, java, node, rust, python)? If so, how do you handle acquiring those dependencies—by hand or using a tool

I haven't felt the need to use Go, the only Java software I use is in the OS repo. I don't want to use JS software for other reasons. This is one of the reasons why I don't like Rust rewrites. Python dependencies are very often in the OS repo. If there is anything else, I compile it from source and I curse when software doesn't use or adheres to the standard of the GNU build system.

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Personally I run "apt install whateverineed"
In general I agree with you. But not for software dev packages.

The package manager I use, apt on Debian, does not package many Python development repos. They've got the big ones, e.g. requests, but not e.g. uuid6. And I wouldn't want it to - I like the limited Debian dev effort to be put towards the user experience and let the Python dev devs worry about packaging Python dev dependencies.

Don't worry, gramps, pip won't trigger your tinfoil hat.
What’s the point of constraining oneself to what is in the OS package manager? I like to keep my dependencies up to date. The versions in the OS package manager are much older.

And let’s say you constrain yourself to your OS package manager. What about the people on different distros? Their package managers are unlikely to have the exact same versions of your deps that your OS has.

> What’s the point of constraining oneself to what is in the OS package manager? I like to keep my dependencies up to date. The versions in the OS package manager are much older.

I favor stability and the stripping of unwanted features (e.g. telemetry) by my OS vendor over cutting edge software. If I really need that I install it into /usr/local, that it what this is for after all.

> And let’s say you constrain yourself to your OS package manager. What about the people on different distros? Their package managers are unlikely to have the exact same versions of your deps that your OS has.

This is a reason to select the OS. Software shouldn't require exact versions, but should stick to stable interfaces.

Then don't use it?