By mail: This seemed like a possible option. However I found that Slovak Post forbids sending banknotes or coins of any value via regular mail (for which shipping would cost €1.60) and instead only allows them in insured packages in which case the shipping would be €20.50 💀
I’m not aware of Slovakian law. But every other postal service in western Europe bans sending cash by mail for insurance reason. They don’t want you to ask for the money back if it doesn’t reach the destination. But they actually don’t track down people sending money. I’ve sent cash by mail many times without any issue. Hide it in a folded A4 paper, so that it’s not visible when looking through the envelope, and it should be fine, it has a 99.99% of arriving like any other letter.
That’s my 2 cents.
Call me an old man. But I like when things are stable. I don’t like starting my computer, and the software was updated to a new version, and some features disappeared or changed in behavior. This is why I hate the web where people update software right under my nose! With no control from my side.
Have ever checked if you checked how maintained are the dependencies/libraries of your favorite software? It’s a nightmare as well. The distro is not making anything worse.
First, the work is not often duplicated. The first maintainer to package will usually upstream patches which make packaging easy. Packagers will look how other distros packagers packaged the app they’re trying to package.
Also the duplication only happen a few time. Ubuntu just pulled almost all of their packages from Debian Sid. Same with RHEL/CentOS and Fedora. And so on, and so on
Also you’re overestimating how hard packaging is, most of the time, it’s scripted. (golang modules in debian, are imported in an almost fully automated way)
You know what distros bring?