I disagree. As someone who knows how to use my system's package manager, it saves me from having to figure out the name of the package and whether or not I need to enable a 3rd party repository. Also, I know at least two people who use Octave that aren't comfortable with their system's package manager. Both of them use Ubuntu for their research because it's easier to get compilers (Fortran and C++) working properly, but they use Windows for general (non-research) computing. One of them is a biophysics graduate student and the other is a chemistry undergraduate.
