&gt; <i>I see package managers as a source of some problems of linux: Package maintainers are a unneeded middleman between the writers of the software and you, package managers interact with the whole system, scattering files around the whole filesystem...</i><p>It sounds like you&#x27;d enjoy Slackware&#x27;s approach to package management. Zero dependency resolution, packages are built from the source tarball with little or no patching (unless you patch it yourself), and the files are installed where the author intended them to be (though that can be good or bad depending on your perspective). If the application has dependencies, you&#x27;re left to install them yourself, ensuring that only the absolutely necessary dependencies are installed, and not, for example, all of Gnome when you just want a simple text editor.<p>&gt; <i>...and running scripts as root when installing&#x2F;uninstalling packages.</i><p>Given that this happens even when you build from source and install yourself (.&#x2F;config, make, <i>sudo</i> make install), I&#x27;m not sure what you&#x27;re asking for. Perhaps the Mac OS X method of &quot;the app is a folder with pre-built binaries and all necessary libraries&quot;? And even some OS X apps require elevation to install, especially those distributed as <i>.pkg</i> files.