I think there is something to be said for the model with the Apple App Store and the Google Play store: they’re being kind of the obvious place that your software comes from, from a vendor who is committed.

This is a terrible example… FDroid is far more “committed” to transparency and security. As the creator of the distro you have full ability to decide which repositories are included.

if you think about just the notion that there is a store full of content that has been somewhat vetted by the distributor of the platform, I think it is difficult to argue that that is a straight bad thing.

It’s absolutely “a bad thing” if the distributor of the platform is the only one who gets to decide what software and repositories can be installed.

You can still download a Snap file off the internet and do snap install – dangerous.

We also don’t need platform distributors declaring anything they haven’t personally verified as “dangerous”…

This is why I’ve always said Ubuntu is the only distro I will dissuade users from using.