This is the ROS way: add more layers of crap on it until it sorta kinda works sometimes. If you want "reproducible package management", use Debian. ROS1 is already in stock Debian. Some of ROS2 is as well. If you actually want ros to suck less, please package the reset of ROS2, and push it to Debian.

Slightly interested if this makes it easier to install ROS on not-Ubuntu, or on "unsupported" Ubuntu versions, but I don't really want to be the one owning the infra behind running the source builds for ROS2, from my experience so far they're kind of slow. Side by side ROS1/2 for migration is kind of interesting, too.

is there by any chance a robot simulator for various kinds of robots so those who don't actually have hardware can explore software aspects?

I think people have been sleeping on Pixi. There has been a lot of hype about uv lately and lots of the praise apply to Pixi as well!

Pixi shines in those niches where Conda was the only option. It seems ROS is one of them.

I have been using Pixi with emscripten-forge to create Python WASM distributions. It’s another niche with a lack of tooling. Pixi is the only tool that streamlined my build process.

Keep up with the good work!