If a client has certified a specific Linux distro as an approved platform, that's what we use.
We can either deliver a single executable (Go) or a Python script, as python is preinstalled on their distro.
If we'd want to use Ruby, it'd be a huge hassle of re-certifying crap and bureauracy and approvals and in that time we'd have the Python solution already running.
Without a root account or inclusion in sudoers list, quite hard. There's millions of people that don't control the machines they work and spend most time with.
Depends on you, your team, your target hardware/os, your project, and many other factors. Considering all of those things, the hurdle of installation might just be too large for it to be worth it.
It's not. This is a non-issue. Every web shop is writing bash to twiddle a build script on servers they also manage, which includes the ability to install any package they want.
Mitigating the risk of downloading a script from the internet and executing it
-- even from a "trusted" website or package manager -- is absolutely a good reason not to use it.
Any decent distro has it. So you don't need to execute any random scripts, just install it or prepare the image with it for your OS install. That's it.
I don't really get this whole defaults being a blocker for tools choice.
