> I'm writing with Hacker News readers, and especially developers in mind
Not all developers are system administrators, which is one of the reasons why MacOS is vastly more popular among developers than Linux. Imagine executing `sudo apt install npm` or `sudo apt install python-pip` and having your desktop wiped out just because you were in a hurry and assumed that everything would work out (which, admittedly, it usually does). I know how to recover from that, not all developers would.
> That's why, imo, distributions that target users migrating from Windows— especially distros that target Windows ‘power users’— should generally direct users away from package managers like apt in favor of package managers which avoid negotiating dependency conflicts in a single global namespace, like Flatpak
Agreed when it comes to Flatpak (I despise it though).
> I have recommended desktop Linux to totally non-technical people I'm willing to support, though.
I've done that before and those people usually turn into help vampires, so I don't do it anymore.
Not all developers are system administrators, which is one of the reasons why MacOS is vastly more popular among developers than Linux. Imagine executing `sudo apt install npm` or `sudo apt install python-pip` and having your desktop wiped out just because you were in a hurry and assumed that everything would work out (which, admittedly, it usually does). I know how to recover from that, not all developers would.
> That's why, imo, distributions that target users migrating from Windows— especially distros that target Windows ‘power users’— should generally direct users away from package managers like apt in favor of package managers which avoid negotiating dependency conflicts in a single global namespace, like Flatpak
Agreed when it comes to Flatpak (I despise it though).
> I have recommended desktop Linux to totally non-technical people I'm willing to support, though.
I've done that before and those people usually turn into help vampires, so I don't do it anymore.