Re: Number of Debian packages available.

[Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net>]

FWIW tons of packages doesn't mean tons of apps etc., since of the
strange policy to split some packages in an insane way, e.g. the jackd
packages are split really insane. Or does any package depend to libjack
without jackd? And if so, why?

There often is the argument that shared libs will keep a system small,
but bad hard dependencies often enlarge a system. On Arch there e.g. is
a dependency to systemd. I use intitscripts, not systemd, but have got
systemd installed. On Debian for example there's a hard dependency to
pulseaudio for some apps, even if it's completely useless.

And FWIW, meta-packages only summarize some other packages, so the count
of packages gives information about big nothing.

2 Cents,
Ralf