A sample journey when trying to install software:

  • Try your distros repos, it’s either not there or an older version
  • Oh wait, you need to add their repo to your list and try again
  • Actually, they don’t have a repo, but you can install this deb/rpm from their site
  • Nevermind, it actually needs to be installed with pip to get the latest version
  • Or wait, it was actually a rust package and needs cargo
  • Well, this package is available as a snap
  • Screw it, I’ll just build it from source…. Except the dependencies I need take me through the entire journey again

It’s crazy with a large package like mesa. It uses meson, which requires it be installed via pip, and also needs rust which is best installed via a snap, but then there are dependencies it needs that require multiple paths…

On Windows: find the msi or exe and be done with it.