Christ, it's such a fucking mess that one of the most compatible ways to distribute software is to write it for Windows and rely on WINE.
And I split my time between Arch, CentOS & OpenBSD. The vast majority of things these days are packaged in a useful way. There's also flatpak and similar now.
Good for you. Some of us have to install up to date software more often than every 5 or 10 years.
Way simpler to do on Linux than M$ Windows.
> [no way to ] to directly distribute binaries without a gigantic fucking headache.
I mean, flatpak, appimage, docker, etc ...
Completely unnecessary on Windows since it is an operating system, not a kludge of random source code from the internet.
> I mean, flatpak, appimage, docker, etc ...
Which of those is ubiquitous enough to ensure availability of what you're looking for in that format? In my experience: none of them. AppImage is easily the best, but the community seems to hate it because it makes things too flexible and simple or something.
Where, pray tell, do people who write the software for this "operating system" store their source code if not somewhere that is connected to the internet? Do they use punch cards?
> Which of those is ubiquitous enough to ensure availability of what you're looking for in that format?
Have not met someone who hates AppImage. flatpak is also rather ubiquitous. I use both every day.
Talk to Drew DeVault, to name one.