Being able to be in control of how the data came to your PC was literally always the promise of the World Wide Web.
Which is why companies were so frantic to create App Stores that they could have full control over and ensure that the user had zero control over how they interacted with the internet.
“Apps” were a mistake.
completely agree. Waiting for some corpo shills to play devils advocate here how users are not smart enough to control their experience and corpos are just helping.
Eh, various Linux DEs have what are essentially app stores because it makes the OS more accessible. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that many people are so technically illiterate that they do need someone to control their experience for them. I think that is an issue, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is the current state of things.
On the other hand, forcing users into using an app store (Apple) is bad, plenty of users are smart enough to control their own experience and some of us like customizing our OS and apps.
GNU/Linux also has other ways of installing software that you can use if you want or need them.
But packages were not.
