No, I do not think Installers are better than package management. By far, package managers are a key factor in system stability.
I'm sorry, what kind of protection is this that only after trashing my installation Apt decided to inform me that it can't handle the package dependencies?
And on top of that, for some reason you think the only alternative is to _bypass_ the package manager and get an even more borked installation? You don't see a third option?
> Having to route around the protection
which I never did or suggested I should do...?
> is precisely why you should use a package manger properly
and you are insinuating this somehow implies I must be using my package manger "improperly" because... why and how exactly?
Yes, because:
>(I don't remember exactly)
There is your problem.
Your package manager prevented you installing something which would have caused instability, and you didn't grok it well enough to understand, and somehow this is the fault of package management?
Did you upgrade your dependency graph before deciding it was all too difficult to understand and use the tool to fix the problem? (apt upgrade && apt update)
apt was telling you something important: you chose to just ignore it because "too confusing" or whatever .. maybe because you grew up on the very poor habit of "just install it and who cares whatever may happen afterwards" of installers?
>_bypass_ the package manager and get an even more borked installation? You don't see a third option?
There is a third option - upgrade your dependencies, try again, and if it persists - remove the offending package and replace it with one that works. That dependency graph is there to tell you: your system may become unstable after you install this.
No such luxury happens with the plain ol' installer methods ..
sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
What "it" are you even talking about? I didn't "choose to ignore" anything. I Marked all Upgrades, clicked Apply, rebooted when it was finished, went to see if there were any more upgrades (there were some), tried to mark & apply them, and was greeted with this error. Apt/Synaptic got me into this broken state and couldn't get me out of it. I don't know what story you're reading, but it doesn't seem to be what I've been writing. There was nothing for me to ignore. The error wasn't something I ignored; it was the problem.
I know, that's really hard for Linux Desktop people to understand, because it goes against their nature of making everything as complicated as possible for no reason. It's not rocket science, lots of systems managed it in the past.
I prefer to just keep the system stable through careful application of well-curated dependency graphs. I've never run into any issue, having used Linux since the very first day, that I couldn't solve by proper application of package manager tools. It seems its easy for newbies and those who don't care enough to get into trouble, but with the right attitude you can easily have systems with years and years of uptime (personal experience).