what does pip do to not suck?

Pick a language like Perl, where some packages are written in C and some are written in pure Perl, and you'll get to experience the same cryptic GCC errors, sometimes. There's no secret to pip; many Python developers upload wheels with pre-compiled binaries, including Windows-compatible binaries, and so you don't have to run GCC because they already did it for you.

It's a 17 year old tool in the world's most popular scripting language. It's effectively had billions of tests run against it.

Pip is amazing. It does somethings in seconds that take anaconda over an hour to do.

I'm surprised to hear you say this because in all honesty, pip really sucks as far as package managers go. uv is a worthy replacement.

If you're getting gcc errors it sounds like the package you're trying to install contains some c/c++ stuff that needs compiling.

A lot of python packages that rely on things written in c/c++ ship those precompiled, which might account for why it feels easier for you.

pip cannot install some system dependencies your library might need. Windows is extra difficult sometimes, as the library might require some paths during installation, Linux is way easier for this kind of stuff. Either you use WSL, or you follow these instructions for Windows I found by googling https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/blob/main/docs/installation_instructions_for_windows.md

I use Mint btw

I'd love to hear a technical answer, but one thing that's probably part of it is the fact that pip is written in Python and Python runs everywhere without much problem (though uv also seems to work pretty flawlessly too lol)

@irelephant do anyone care a thing about windoze? :O