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Lio·

I have the same problem on Ubuntu LTS distributions. Eg the ancient version of git in 16.04LTS.

You can fix that of course but homebrew does the same job on macOS.

Roll on 18.04LTS.

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Homebrew exists on Linux. I like running LTS distros because they just work. For newer per-project exceptions, I put everything into a container (again layered on LTS), it is esp nice for things like specific versions of LLVM which I wouldn't want to pollute my base machine with. My peronal userland gets shipped via, cargo, go, pip, npm, etc.

https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew

I try to put everything our team does into a container for the same reason. I'd point out though that the version of docker listed by apt on 16.04LTS is also really ancient. Pre docker-ce.

Yeah, I install docker on to 16.04LTS via this install guide [0]. I'd happily use something else, and probably will, but docker is low friction.

[0] https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/

The most enjoyable and productive dev workstations I have used/setup have all used rolling release distro's for this exact reason.

It does have the overhead of requiring you actually understand (or know how to google) your system/packages that you use though.

It's not just understanding the packages. When I upgraded from 16.04LTS to 17.10 I had to relearn how to compile the kernel because my laptop would no longer boot.

Wasn't that hard to do in the end but it's not something I've done for many, many years and doesn't fill me with confidence.

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