> Right, but the point of a high-quality distribution is that this complicated hard work only needs to be done once (per package, updated for upstream changes obviously) by your distribution's package maintainer.

Sure it works for a sysadmin, but it's not matching at all how regular people are using their computer.

It means you can only use packages that are part of the official repo and:

- it's hard to get in those official repo

- it takes a lot of time

- it assumes free software

- if your app embeds its own dependancies, it's usually rejected by default

- it's a bottleneck for publication (the repo team is limited in resources)

- you have no control over updates

- you can't make people pay for software that are in those repos

- you may want/need to package the software yourself or for yourself

On my computer I have a huge number of softwares that I have not installed from the repos:

puslsms, vscode, telegram, dynalist, veracrypt, signal, discord, antidote, bitwarden firefox developper, guitar, stremio, pop corn time, dukto, photoflare, sublime text, table plus and sublime merge

I think using the simple act of spreading this argument is a demonstration of how remote one can get from the vast diversity of the user base.