Yeah, that solution makes the best sense to me. As the manager of those repositories, you'd have to make them available to every major distro out there to keep everyone happy, meaning you'd have to generate packages for every perl module in each of their differing formats, which could become an unruly pain in the arse.

Compare this to the easy solution: releasing one package per distro, your own package manager. I'm no expert on the subject though I'd imagine this is why things are the way they are.

Different users have their own reasons, but I like to be able to remotely connect via SSH to edit files directly. No need for FTP, VNC, X11 forwarding, etc.

For web development on a remote server, this has proven to be very handy for me.

It would be more accurate to generalize that and say that there exist people who use this kind of software and develop an "elitist" or "purist" attitude. I've seen it happen with all manner of TUI and CLI software. Also with *nix operating systems in general. Basically anything with a steep learning curve.

Even in 2013. The statement is "I prefer more complicated software than what you use, so that makes me smarter than you." Of course not everybody has this attitude, but there are some who do.

It has its pros and its cons. On one hand, I really like the idea of only having one package manager handle everything. No need to keep track of different utilities and all their different syntaxes.

On the other hand, a distro-specific package repository is never as fresh as an application-specific repository. Debian is a prime example of this. It has many but not all perl modules, and not all of them are up to date. CPAN, by comparison, tends to have the latest, and of a fuller variety. But CPAN doesn't necessarily handle dependencies with finesse so I've had to fall back on installing perl packages from the distro. So the RHEL machine I've been expected to develop with at work is using an ungodly combination of CPAN and YUM packages to give me everything I need.

Trying to get off of that system as soon as I can...

I believe the proper term is "clowder."

Script kiddies don't hack.

This is actually a very interesting observation. When it comes to having software made available for multiple architectures, the open source community is way ahead of everybody else.

Even if the author of an open x86 application is lazy/busy/indifferent about releasing for other architectures, somebody else may already have taken the liberty. And if not, you can crank out a binary yourself.

I was interested in replacing a personal x86 Debian server with something lower-power but was avoiding ARM for the longest time because I was afraid I would lose a lot of the software I use regularly. I didn't figure ARM was good for anything more than smartphones and game consoles. Then I took a look at Debian's ARM repository and found that every single Linux program I needed was already there. So, $35 and a few apt-get's later, and I had a Raspberry Pi running all of my same applications on a completely different architecture.

The point of all this? It was no hassle for me to switch to ARM while sticking with the same OS and applications.

Seriously. It doesn't take a whiz to figure this out.

They call it the iPee.

Javascript.

...what are they going to do? Fire him?

...but if you're running Vista or 7, you're on your own. At least, according to Slashdot's headline...

It's okay. He is redeemed by his clever portmanteau of "Windows" and "doze."

You can change your file associations to use non-Metro software. The image viewer that came with 7 is still there in 8, so you can set it to be your default for viewing images. (Or there are some great alternatives out there, I like Irfanview.) Same deal with Windows Media Player, you can tell it to use the desktop version rather than the Metro version. (Or in my case, Media Player Classic.)

Even without classic shell, I have gotten by just fine in desktop mode. I only see Metro when the computer reboots (not often) or when I press the Windows key and start typing to do a search. I do prefer 7's style of searching over 8, but it's not a huge deal for me. I had to get used to using WinKey + i to initiate sleep/restart/shutdown, but other than that my workflow has not suffered from switching.