Every year, as spring draws near, the chore of having to file my income tax announces itself with the arrival of a blue envelope from the 'Belastingdienst' (equivalent of the IRS in the USA). I always need to work myself up to actually doing it, but the promise of tax returns eventually brings me to gather the paperwork, and start up the computer.
Since years uncounted (at least before I had an income) the Belastingdienst has offered software to make the process as smooth and painless as possible. I always get sweaty palms over the legal jargon they expose me to, but I've learned over the years that most things don't apply.
Of course, being a Linux geek since 1.2.13 I've tried to file taxes under Linux. The first years I had to come by with running Wine, which worked almost perfectly. But since a couple of years the Belastingdienst has recognised the existence of other operating systems and offered Mac OS X and Linux versions of their tax software.
This year, I even had two choices: tarball installation or Linux-autopackage. A mysterious choice, but the download seemed to be significantly smaller. Could it be that this would cooperate with my installation in a meaningful way? I hoped for the best and chose autopackage.
I fired up the installer and before long a pop-up asked me to type the administrator password. Then, to my horror, the autopackage system started to write files all over my /usr file system. The only one I normally let touch this part of the system is the package management software that comes with my Linux distribution.
For a conscious system administrator this is like inviting a friend into your house, and he brings a couple of big hairy dogs that dig up your carefully trimmed garden, knock over the bird feeder, poop in the petunias and leave hair and muddy paws all over the house. You'd think twice about inviting that friend again.
