IMHO, the Linux distros are doing it wrong. Just because you have a package management system, doesn't mean you have to use it for everything. I think hackers have seen the absolutely shitpile that most distro's make when they try to override things like CPAN, Ruby Gems, etc. They really need to go hands off on some of those things and let the secondary package manager do it's job

Just because you've got a hammer, doesn't mean every problem is a nail.