A Distro as a composability and integration facilitator
Do you need integration among processing-programs- of composable types? I think by its nature a Distro is a selection filter and a composability enabler. Surely there is a danger when you push intergration beyond a limit. Cracks are more easily to spread (think systemd) but i think being on the too loosely end beat the purpose of its existence. Easily copied. A disjoint collection.
In what stage a colloboration integration becomes a walled garden and stagnation creeps in ? In what stage a messed up soup of third party installers create havoc to your system ? Do you install the lately version from upstream or the stable one from your distro ?
libraries
clisp
In clisp dev you must access quicklisp that is managed outside distro.
python
cpp
apps
libreoffice writer
Using LOWriter raises various integration issues regarding the host distro into which you install it. LOWriter could be seen a process regarding human language processing. But there are many other program in the libresoftware space that also fall in that category. Spellcheckers , input methods , accessibility , voice recognition , text speechers etc and data files like dictionaries and fonts. So the question are unvoidable . Do you need integration among language processing programs , filetypes . ? Do we value integration, interoperabily and composability ( unix tool pipeline vibes) ?
How all the above are integrated to the locales system ? How do they adapt to a console only system ? Can you have accessibility out of the desktop ? To a pseudo only tty system ? And to various desktop integration efforts (lightweight or not)
openshot
games
games / about
Games, interestingly as selfcontained - selfreferential fantasy worlds are by their current nature the least integrated packages . Worst than walled gardens from corporations!! . Yes . That provocative statement has arguments!! . You can find libregames easily on corporate stores . Surely the may need glibc or sdl but thats is a vertical depedency that i think is the least difficult to replicate. But as you move higher into horizontal dependencies i make my theory claim that games exhibit the least vertical depedencies of all types of a linux distro packaged software.
So by that i mean that in the dilemma : download the newer -third party packaged- upstream version? the answer would be why not? What could you miss?
But ..imagine two games Oolite and FreeOrion sharing a common world ! Then you have horizontal intergration!! Or in age of overhyped LLMs games imagine a game that wants to use language voice generation ?