Not being transparent about a potential security issue is not the same as outputting low quality work though. If a piece of FOSS lacks some quality or features that I’d really like it is a little annoying, but understandable and not a big deal. If I hear that there are binary blobs that no one can reproduce or conclusively explain, and the devs are silent, I won’t assume the best intentions regardless of where they are from.

Are you now the IT support guy for these workstations, or is the school’s IT going to take over maintenance. I guess you have an internship or something if you are.

It’s not about the package management method that we use. It’s about the friends and enemies we made along the way (while arguing about package management.)