Why does Debian change software?

Then there's stuff like: "this project only compiles with an obsolete version of gcc" so the alternatives are dropping it or fixing it. Closely related are bugs that only manifest on certain architectures, because the developers only use amd64 and never compile or run it on anything else, so they make incorrect assumptions.

Then there's python that drops standard library modules every release, breaking stuff. So they get packaged separately outside of python.

There's also cherry picking of bugfixes from projects that haven't released yet.

Is there any reason you think debian developers are genetically more prone to making mistakes than anyone else? Considering that debian has an intensive test setup that most projects don't even have.

So I can add spotify or signal-desktop to NixOS via nixpkgs, and they won’t succeed at updating themselves. But they might try, which would be a violation of Debian’s guidelines.

It’s a tough line — I like modern, commercial software that depends on some service architecture. And I can be sure it will be sort of broken in 10-15 years because the company went bust or changed the terms of using their service. So I appreciate the principles upheld by less easily excited people who care about the long term health of the package system.

I actually prefer the RHEL policy of leaving packages the way upstream packaged them, it means upstream docs are more accurate, I don't have to learn how my OS moves things around.

One example that sticks out in memory is postgres, RHEL made no attempt to link its binaries into PATH, I can do that myself with ansible.

Another annoying example that sticks out in Debian was how they create admin accounts in mysql, or how apt replaces one server software with another just because they both use the same port.

I want more control over what happens, Debian takes away control and attempts to think for me which is not appreciated in server context.

It swings both ways too, right now Fedora is annoying me with its nano-default-editor package. Meaning I have to first uninstall this meta package and then install vim, or it'll be a package conflict. Don't try and think for me what editor I want to use.

Are you kidding now? Red Hat was always notorious of patching their packages heavily, just look download an SRPM and have a look.