I've been in several offices where people think they need Photoshop to crop or resize photos. Consequently no-one has Photoshop (because its expensive) and people end up pasting 2000x800 images of logos into their letterhead and wondering why all the word files got so big.
Paint.Net is brilliant for doing common tasks like that.
Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' - that has really stopped me from recommending it to people recently.
I think the big difference is that they come with the OSes that those types of people are likely to use. And being stores, they provide software that package managers are unlikely to provide.
I think package managers becomes less useful to average users when you can't expect all of your software to be there.
On Android they sometimes do install OS level stuff (libraries, etc). I think he has a good point.
The biggest difference I see is that package managers on most Linux distributions are designed to be extensible to support other sources. Application stores generally are not.
My daughter accidentally downloaded 6 different programs while trying to download Paint.net some which were malware. While I understand these are ads probably out of their control, their website is extremely deceptive in my opinion and should be modified to make the actual Paint.net download more obvious.
I did the same about 6 months ago trying to grab speedfan for someone else in the office. I never had any trouble before cause adblock and so didn't even think to be careful :(
It's why I do use adblockers. I try to disable them on sites that don't do anything nearly this scummy, which is frustrating because stuff like Paint.net I otherwise want to support.
I'm pretty sure these ads are exactly what they are to maximize click-rate, and therefore to give Paint.NET's author the most money. Very exploitative (with emphasis on exploit).
What I find interesting is that when people go to the PDN forums to call him out on it, even in a nice way ("hey, I love your software but I got a bunch of malware instead due to the big fake buttons, just wanted you to know"), he blasts them and whines about how little money he makes off of a project he pours his life into, and how he's going to just quit because it's not worth the hassle anymore.
Then he releases a new version, makes even bigger buttons that lead to even scummier malware, and the cycle repeats.
I get the need to make money off of your hard work, and certainly the guy does a fantastic job on the software, but he's pulling some really shitty tactics to make that money. Why not a lite/pro version setup, or something else above board?
The lite vs. pro version is a great suggestion and I would have purchased a pro version for my daughter immediately to avoid the malware hassles it caused us. Instead she purchased an academic version of Photoshop which was $100 USD or in that ballpark. This is a shame because Paint.net is a great product and I'd like to see it succeed but their business side is poorly executed. I'll need to head over to the PDN forums and express my frustration.
For three years I worked for a company that actually created and distributed the fake download button ads (along with a wide variety of other "interesting" projects). I even designed some of the creatives during early A/B tests. And even I still click the wrong link on occasion.
Paint.Net is brilliant for doing common tasks like that.
Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' - that has really stopped me from recommending it to people recently.