&gt; unusable by hijacking it&#x27;s name space<p>That&#x27;s not what was exactly written but is illuminating none-the-less (the original quote only says &quot;name,&quot; which is a very different thing to &quot;namespace&quot;). Why do package managers have a single namespace to begin with? I should be able to install packages regardless of name conflicts, by using a namespace, e.g.<p><pre><code>    $&gt; apt-get install mdm
    Found org.debian.mdm and com.linuxmint.mdm.
    $&gt; apt-get install com.linuxmint.mdm
    $&gt; apt-get install org.debian.mdm
</code></pre>
There&#x27;s obviously the chance for a file system conflict, but the package manager should be able to keep track of that for you and abort if it would occur (or allow you to install it to a different prefix).<p>It&#x27;s incredibly naive to believe that name conflicts would never occur, especially with the 3-letter acronyms&#x2F;contractions that are so prevalent in Unix. I&#x27;d pin the blame this <i>specific</i> problem squarely on Debian, it shouldn&#x27;t be happening in the first place.