AnduinOS

Honestly, the fact that to install software you have to go on a site, download an installer, and run it, is one of the reasons why I don't like Windows.

Not only that thing is time consuming and cannot be easily automated, but it's error prone, you are likely to find in the first Google results not the official website of the software but some other site like Softonic that with the software also installs bloatware/malware/toolbars/etc. Of course an expert user can distinguish the official site from a scam, but usually the average computer user can't.

What I like about Linux is just that you type in a terminal (or you use one of the many GUI that exist) `sudo apt install ` and a version of that software, along with its dependencies, it is installed. And not only installed, but packaged, if needed patched, and tested to work along with other software in the distribution. When I install Windows I spend at least 1 hours going to every website of software that I need, download the installer, run the installer, click next, next, next, and repeat. With Linux I can just type in a single command every software that I need, let it run and install it, while I do other things.

And when you need to uninstall a software? On Windows you need the uninstaller, that if it was not created correctly, or created at all, will leave a lot of stuff on the system, files, registry keys, broken links, cache files, etc that you need to remove either manually or with some "cleaner" programs that do more harm than good, for that reason an installation of Windows needs to be formatted every X years cause of the accumulated crap.

From a developer point of view, and I've done many times, writing an installer for Windows, even using open source frameworks like NSIS, is a manual operation that is time consuming, can induce in errors, you need to learn a specific scripting language, etc, while making a package for Ubuntu/Debian (for example) is a simple operation, as simple as put the files of your software in a directory, put in a metadata file, and launch a command to produce the package. Most build systems (automake, cmake) already can create deb packages automatically with commonly used plugins.

> yet when one of my devices breaks down, I can get a replacement on the same day,

How many times has it happened in your life?

Anyone who uses a computer professionally has a backup ready at all time anyway. These days it is not like it is hard to find a computer with its baseline compatible with linux anyway. An incompatible network chip issue is easily solved with a know USB compatible wifi card. Usually only people buying brand new uncommon tech/features or gaming experience issues.

What does it actually mean to create a distro though? Is it just what software you package in your flavour of debian?

The Mac way kind of depends on how you get your application. Sometimes applications come from the app store, sometimes they're ZIP'ed files that get auto-extracted, sometimes they're in DMGs that are mounted but not extracted, and sometimes they open some kind of install wizard.

Some of them you can open by right-clicking them and hitting open. Others just open directly. There are also apps that throw up an error when you try to open them and you need to go to the security settings to hit an oddly-placed button to open them. Whether or not you've managed to run the program at least once also seems to influence whether or not an app in the applications folder actually shows up in Launchpad.

Windows does half of this too these days, but these days every OS is confusing and needs specific know-how when you just want to run the tool you downloaded.

It's a Chinese distro, so it's not that surprising that they package a Chinese office solution.