graeme_p - 4:59 am on Nov 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

@drhowarddrfine, yes you are misunderstanding what I (and dstiles?) am saying, probably because you have not seen how Linux does this.

1) You can have multiple "app stores"
2) They all use the same mechanism, so you only one run software installer and updater, and they look, in the GUI, like a single "app store".
3) Common components, like languages, libraries, etc., as well as any app available from more than once source, are updated to the latest version available from any "store".

The benefits of 3) are:

1) You get updates soon, which is good for security.
2) You save disc space, memory and bandwidth because you only need one copy of each library.

In theory this can cause compatibility problems, but in practice this has happened to me once in the last few years, I could not install a flight simulator because a library was too new for it. You can get similar problem with DLLs on Windows, but Linux handles the problem much better AND it is rare.