Really? I haven't used RubyGems, but one of my favourite things about Python packaging is that I can take a proper Python distutils-based package, and in about thirty seconds create a usable RedHat package that my sysadmin colleagues can safely and easily deploy to our production systems, alongside all the other updates they manage.

I believe various Debian packaging "helper" scripts (like Joey Hess' "debhelper") have built-in support for Python distutils packages too.