User Firendly Not

[MASONTX]

I've been using linux for 4 years now, and have yet to mess with dependencies. I have used Ubuntu, Lubuntu, AntiX, Mint, and Dreamlinux at various times, and all of them installed, and programs I wanted installed, out of the package manager with no problems. Synaptic in particular checks for dependencies and downloads them automatically, no hassles. The only difficulty is sorting through all the programs available and deciding which ones to download, i.e. do you want Abbi word, open office, or one of the other word processors. Once you decide you want open office say, synaptic does all the rest, downloads, checks and downloads dependencies, and installs.

[Rubberman]

Well, what Etna says about some software in a distribution's package repositories often being out of date is true, for the most part; generally because of dependencies on versions of libraries and such that are not yet supported by the distribution. In such cases, sometimes you can install the newer version of the package from source, after you have also installed the dependencies in a way that won't interfere with existing stuff on your system (not always simple or possible). I had to do that a lot with CentOS/RHEL 5, especially for multimedia applications and tools. That's one of the reasons why I updated recently to SL6/RHEL6. The kernel and system libraries are much more up to date, so a lot of stuff that I had to really futz with are much easier to install now.

In any case, there are still situations where an application is using such new facilities that only the most bleading-edge Linux distribution supports, that they are impossible to install on most systems. I mutter really loudly when this happens, because I think it is usually a case of myopia on the part of the developers toward their possible user-base. Rant, rant...

[elija]

With distributions like Debian, RHEL (and CentOS, Scientific Linux etc), the fact that they don't have the latest greatest versions is kind of the point. It's what their target market want. Well tested, well patched and stable (as in unchanging and not falling over) software. For those that want to be on the bleeding edge, there are distributions like Fedora and if you want some real Debian "fun", there's Sid or even Experimental if you have the nerve / skill - or early Alpha's of course. If you want to be a bit more modern with Debian without blazing a trail, there is Testing, but as the name implies, it does on occasion break! That's what Ubuntu is based on and LMDE.

Fortunately, there are enough Distributions out there that nearly anyone can find one to their taste and if not, you can even roll your own which I might try when I have a year or so free