Desktop apps declined in popularity largely because of security concerns - you could download a virus that would steal data from all your other critical apps, like password managers or Bitcoin wallets. Browser apps are somewhat better isolated. Is there a way to prevent downloaded exe's from installing key loggers and root kits?
Is this still a problem in 2022? This is a solved problem in the linux world, with each distro having their package managers and vetted repositories.
Of course, security issues still can arise, and sometimes you have to skip the official repositories to find what you need, but still much better than always downloading random binaries from the web.
Yes, windows has an app store now. Still, I wouldn't trust any app store, look how many Android or ios apps are compromised. And npm libraries have been compromised. App store "vetters" just can't find all exploits, it's mathematically impossible.
Has there been a trojan found in the Debian, Ubuntu or RedHat repositories? If so, I haven't heard about it, and neither did Google -- and I've been using these one way or another for 27 years now.
I suppose Arch/AUR might have had one. But there's a huge difference between a Windows store, which publishes author-provided executable files as-is, and Debian / Ubuntu / RedHat repositories which are all built from source.
