Exactly right. The message of the post is that "side-loading" is only used in reference to exploitation services. We could just as easily refer to side loading in Linux and it would be accurate in every way, except that there is no exploitation.

It's literally the exception that proves the rule.

There is no functional difference.

The key difference is that one is advised, the other is enforced.

If you used Linux before the repos were fully developed then you understand why they were created.

Who else remembers "dependency hell?"

Corpos just took the same idea and twisted it into something else.

It may feel like a double standard but it's not

Most Linux stores are created and maintained by volunteers

Those stores aren't limiting software they host based on what makes them the most money. Money isn't involved.at all

Linux won't stop you from adding more stores

Linix won't stop you from manually adding any other software, either as a package or even manually building it from scratch

My package manager installs all of the dependencies the program needs and takes care of updates, too. If I install directly from the developer, I have to do all that myself. Fuck that.

Nothing ever comes “directly from the developer”, and any developer that attempts to do so ends up in a level of hell not yet documented. There are way too many distros, way too many architectures, way too many moving targets, that also includes iOS, macOS and Windows. No single developer can hit them all. There's no standard packaging either. So, usually they only package for one or a handful of popular distros, or one container format. But that's the magic of FOSS. Anyone can take the source code and repackage it, redistribute it and make it available for others. This is assumed to be a strength and not a weakness of FOSS and Linux. Thus, the distros create their own official repositories where they make themselves responsible that everything will mostly work nicely with one another.

The difference is that package repositories are safe havens of compatibility. While appStores are enforced cages that cannot be escaped. If a package repository tries to fuck up with users, hurt the FOSS space (looking at you Ubuntu Snaps), or gets compromised by a bad actor; you just move to another repository, another distro, a different format, another safe space. If Android or Apple decides to enshittify and fuck over customers, users, get compromised or do something to hurt developers, you are fuck out of luck. This difference matters.

Because the Linux repositories are apathetic third parties (ie they have no reason to care whether or not you download any given app) while Microsoft and apple are financially incentivised for you to buy buy buy.

This means that when you download a .exe from a vendor instead of going through the windows store you're cutting Microsoft out of their cut of what you paid and you're denying Microsoft information about what it is that you bought. But the flipside is Microsoft didn't impartially verify that it's not malicious.

When you download a .deb instead of going through apt, you're also denying them their cut (of nothing) and you're denying the repository managers the ability to see what you're doing, but Linux people generally trust repository managers to not be selling their habits to advertisers and governments.

I will say there is a reason to side load on Linux though, paid software is sometimes unavailable through repos.

And yet on Linux the advice seems to be never ever download directly from the developer

That's just advice for making life easy for new people, because distro-packaged software is more likely to work well with the operating system. I run packages from devs, even nightly automated builds of stuff, all the time.

I measured the heights of myself and my niece and found them to be different, clearly a double standard must be involved.

You yourself mentioned a lot of differences between corporate app stores and distros' software repositories. Why are you surprised people rate them differently?

Perhaps because your standards are different from more Linux users' standards.

I for example would rather take my chances with a random volunteer rather than trust a corporation that had a history of breaking laws and I know it to want to make money off me.

And yet on Linux the advice seems to be never ever download directly from the developer

Are people really giving this advice that often and that strongly? I find myself building more and more things from source these days. Especially with modern languages that OS maintainers are actually having a difficult time packaging in the way they're used to.

Installing from a repo via a terminal does not feel like an App Store at all. It's only the GUI apps that do and those are all entirely optional. Exactly how it should be. God's in his heaven. All's right with the world.