FWIW I sometimes think the need to occasionally resolve software dependencies on your own has the hidden advantage of discouraging too much willy-nilly installation of software.
One problem with the distro repositories (and new software managers) is that it's often like turning a glucose addict loose in a jellybean factory. ("OMG! Just look at all this neat stuff! And it's all FREE!!! Hmm...now THAT looks cool. I wonder what it does?") And sometimes Linux's emphasis on freedom and the constant encouragement to "experiment" backfires.
I wish I had a nickel for every Linux newbie who installed something like Ubuntu and really liked what they saw, who then went hog wild installing
everything that looked even
remotely interesting (including adding PPAs to their soft sources without fully understanding the risks) and soon wound up with either a dodgy or totally 'pooched' system.
Very often, these same people will then remove Linux from their machines, and begin posting everywhere they can about how "stupid" and "broken" and "bug-ridden" and "not ready for the desktop" Linux is.
Too bad they conveniently forget how you can also bring a Windows machine to its knees by getting a little too crazy installing as much freeware as you can get your hands on.
I had a client who was a freeware/demo junkie. About twice a year he totally roached his main machine doing that and called us to fix it. Last time out I counted 14 different file managers, four defrag utilities, five different antivirus/antil-malwar utilities (three of which had scanners
simultaneously active!), three different sync tools (also all simultaneously active), at least a dozen photo editors, god knows how many games, plus a bunch of other things too numerous to count (fonts) or too weird to be worth even looking at.
This guy was frustrated because his machine took something like seven minutes to get to the desktop on a reboot besides regularly freezing up on him once it did. (I myself was amazed he could get that poor little PC to boot at all.)
Oh yeah, he was also a regular user and firm advocate of registry 'fixing' and system tweaking utilities.
This is the same guy who was always protesting how software companies "must take their customers for idiots" and "treated them like children." Not that he really
wanted to learn anything. He was of the "these things should just work by now" school of thought.
People like that make me want to scream sometimes. (Although
two visits per year at
full onsite rate did go a long way towards easing my pain.
)
On the other hand, the people who make me want to scream almost
all the time are the ones who conveniently forget how dumbed-down Microsoft and Apple try to make their whole "user experience." Supposedly it's done in the name of "convenience" and "user-friendliness." However, a good part of their motivation is also to foster enduser dependence and platform lock-in.
Not to say Linux doesn't have its own problems. But stupid is as stupid does. And nobody (or at least not anybody born on Earth to human parents) comes into this world
knowing how to use this stuff. (Not even OSX - despite what Steven Jobs may have thought.) There is always a learning curve involved. Even if it's so ingrained that, by the time they're 12, most people forgot just how much they
did have to learn in order to use Windows.
So why should Linux be any different?
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