Recent trends in software development have raised questions as to whether package management in Linux distributions is still relevant. Whether it's independent package managers in popular Web frameworks and languages (Node.js, Ruby, Python, etc) or bundling and containerization that's become increasingly popular in DevOps culture, it appears that integrated approaches to package management are on the decline. Yet at the same time we've seen package managers in the Windows world such as NuGet grow more popular. This talk from a leader of the Gentoo Linux distribution will explore the reasoning and history behind this shift and whether it's the right move for the FLOSS movement as a whole.

1. Is distro-level
package management
obsolete?
Donnie Berkholz
@dberkholz

2. Key questions
●
How are developers shipping apps?
●
Do they still care about distributions?
●
What do your current users want?
●
What do other users want?
●
What do distro maintainers want?
●
How have all of these changed over time?

6. cloud
cloud
cloud
cloud
cloud
cloud
cloud

7. DevOps
DevOps
DevOps
DevOps
DevOps
DevOps
DevOps

8. WTF
is
DevOps,
anyhow?

9. “Infrastructure as code”

10. Chef to Debian:
Please stop
packaging us

11. Distro stability
vs
rapid releases

12. APIs, SDKs, CI

13. Language-level PMs/repos

14. The split at data stores
Developers
choose
Sysadmins
choose

15. Containerization

16. “Package my damn code”

17. “I don't care about distros”
●
git clone git+ssh://github.com/...

18. Package management in Windows?!
●
NuGet
●
CoApp
●
Chocolatey

19. Rethinking the distro

20. What do we need?
●
Transparent bundling
●
PM visibility/understanding of bundles
●
Use a real data store
●
Integrated configuration management

21. Worldview:
code-centric
vs
systems-centric

22. Flickr: kalandrakas

23. Donnie Berkholz
dberkholz@redmonk.com
Twitter/IRC: dberkholz
Disclosures: AWS, Chef, Splunk, CloudBees (Jenkins), AnsibleWorks, and Basho are clients.
GitHub, Puppet Labs, and Black Duck (Ohloh) have been clients.