Ability to export data to a relevant, open standard. If I can jump ship at the drop of a hat, then I’ll consider it. I won’t buy if I don’t have that power.

Pretty sure humans are animals too

Why would they? They know how it’s made!

This is what I mean. This won’t help in your case.

What if I put a C-to-A Adapter on both ends? Is that okay?

Huh, didn’t realise Windows is on a level to be compared to TempleOS. And losing. Thanks for that.

I just saw discussions like this

So no, there are more parts to your phone. You forgot the whole part you, the user, solely interact with.

I want to say “Haha, Idiot trusting Microsoft”.

But honestly I want the same stuff he wants. Including modems in mobile phones. Including EVERYTHING I own.

Warning, no technical stuff, only creed:

I don’t hate Windows in and off itself. For me it represents my first contact with a computer and influences my choice of UI to this day.

I hate what it stands for, which for me is something I call “gated computing”; a restriction of access to computational power and abilities. It turns a machine with near limitless potential, like watching cat videos, sharing how to best build bridges or calculating the bygone cycles of the moon, to a machine that maliciously distracts people while giving a selected few the power of watching over them with ever changing objectives as to why they watch them.

Windows, like few others, eased people into thinking that that was the right way to use a computer all along.

That is why I hate it.

I’m sorry, I don’t think I can see the point you are making. Are you saying that one can get around the 3-5 people by using flatpaks, ro home directories and other mitigations?

A matter of perspective I think. It’s a flaw in my opinion. Just downloading anything from anywhere sets one up for failure/malware.

Code Signing on its own is useless, I think. If there is no distribution structure or user-validated trustchain, of course. But then you don’t really need Code Signing, a simple hash is enough.

My personal preference are the distro repos, to a point where I even dislike additional package managers like pip, npm or cargo.

I do mean downloading random stuff from random websites.

True. Still the most windows-like installation method.

Your wanted option is not gone, you can still download the binaries if the author presents them; or you can compile it from source. This is just another, more convenient way to distribute the program.

If you are looking to get your programs Windows-style, to download a binary or “install wizard”, then you can look into appimages.

Like any form of distribution however: someone has to offer this, be it the author or “some rando”.