Synaptic is a major improvement over the original apt tools -- while it's slower, it actually handles dependencies correctly most of the time, and doesn't throw anal-retentive errors.

Unfortunately, the underlying apt system has plenty of shitty behaviors that aren't even related to Debian's shitty packaging policies or the hostile original implementation:

  * Only one process can even read the db at a time!
  * It's extraordinarily fragile
    * Loves to crap out at the slightest network failure
    * Will corrupt its database on SIGINT
  * Hamhandedly muddles up installation and configuration
  * Does not handle optional dependencies well
  * Poorly handles only part of the 'alternatives' problem

A lot of its failings are rooted in the assumption that installation will be fast enough to be interactive, so why bother?

Actually I believe a few ar problems with the parent poster: "* Rearranging everything to fit their naive 'filesystem hierarchy'(this completely fucks up a decent packager like Ruby Gems)"

The FHS is a known standard which works with every language. What specifically about Ruby makes it unique amongst all other software?

Gems (like NeXT / OS X .app bundles) are self-contained, with the documentation and data resources alongside the code in a standard way. This makes it very easy to support having multiple versions of the same software installed simultaneously, with an optionally qualified import statement to disambiguate.

The FHS inspires maintainers to large amounts of useless and regressive tedium in re-separating the peas and the carrots into global piles. It's not so bad with traditional C libraries, but the brokenness is immediately obvious when dealing with the libraries of a language that has anything resembling a module system.

What's specific to Ruby is that their community somehow managed to not fuck up their packaging medium.

Yes, but native package managers already allow multiple versions to be installed simultaneously.

'What's specific to Ruby is that their community somehow managed to not fuck up their packaging medium.'

Overwriting global binaries in /usr/bin is pretty fucked to me, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Say I'm using puppet or OVirt or other Ruby based system apps - I wouldn't want Gems breaking them. If Python did this (being the basis for most Linux distros) or Perl did this on older Unix there would be hell to pay.