For so long, we were told how great Linux is because of its package managers and how those packages can share dependencies to save space.

Distro-agnostic packages like Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage appear to offer ease of use, but they come with drawbacks:

• Increased Disk Space Usage: Repeating dependencies is BLOAT! -Funny how Linux users label nearly everything from Microsoft as bloat. (Also ignoring that Linus has called the kernel ‘huge and bloated’ 10 years ago).

• Performance Overhead: Isolated environments can result in performance issues compared to native installations.

• Limited Integration: Themes and integration aren’t all there.

• Security Concerns: While they provide some degree of sandboxing, there are concerns about the security of the pseudo sandbox environments and their potential for vulnerabilities.

• Complexity: Managing multiple package formats and environments can add complexity. -Can you remember how you installed something, or where to find it?

Distro agnostic packages enable even more fragmentation by making it easier for anyone to create and maintain a distro. They didn’t resolve Wayland compatibility issues (among other Wayland problems) with tiling Window managers, so while Fedora was pushing Wayland for example, Hyprland wasn’t an option. Now more people that could be helping on a distribution (or making something like Hyprland buildable on Fedora) are instead broken up on their own half assed projects.

Building from source can be a better option. DWM took mere seconds to build for example. With multiple distro-agnostic packages (and likely more on the horizon), support for building from source and solutions like the AUR will get less attention as Linux goes down this additionally fragmented path.