Usually, I prefer manually installing the packages needed for getting started with a new language or technlogy.
I avoid using distro package managers since they tend to be a bit outdated in this regard, and specialised package managers like SDKMAN! seem overkill for one or more packages. Exceptions being languages with excellent tooling and version management like Rust or Ocaml.
I’ve been doing this for a while and was wondering what the general consensus is
Edit: Thanks for your replies everyone! I’ve decided to stick with my distro package manager.
one more for using nix, but for language tooling I generally prefer a nix shell and installing per project dependencies there. then updates don’t break random projects and you know all the dependencies of a given project