Why Linux Sucks

People complain that installing applications is too hard. Others reply that they just need to use the package management.
People complain that application X is not in the repositories. And that's where the issue lies, while there's autoconf/automake, distributions tend to split the (usually minimal in size) development header files from the main package and must be installed in order to compile X from source. In the worst case, X needs Y, which in turn isn't in the repositories, either.

Developers program stuff, they don't want to deal with the interia of a few gazillion package management systems out there. Anyone who has ever dealt with RPM/deb will agree that the formats are just huge issues, especially if the developers don't document their software.

Then there's a limited amount of people who actually do the work and maintain the packages, as well as backport changes if needed. Those people of course don't want to maintain gazillion packages of somewhat unpopular packages. This issue is even worse with distributions who refuse to ship non-free packages.

In other words, developers don't want to deal with overly complex packaging issues and packagers don't want to maintain even more insignificant software.

This problem could be easily solved if there was just *one* package format, that solves all needs and that's as easy to write as a shell script. Of course, if the program needs compile-time options, that isn't a solution (Most programs who do rely on compile-time options either suck or are built for advanced users anyway).