Which is fine if you're comfortable compiling from source or installing packages manually. My point is that on OSX or Windows, installing an application from "

Which is fine if you're comfortable compiling from source or installing packages manually. My point is that on OSX or Windows, installing an application from "upstream", like getting the latest Firefox from Mozilla.org for example, is something even relatively non-technical users can do by themselves. On a Linux desktop, it's a "here there be dragons" operation. Not to mention that on Windows or OSX, a developer of a relatively small, obscure application (like say, HN favorite Bingo Card Creator) has a standard, relatively easy way to package their application up for installation by end users. On a Linux desktop that's really damn difficult for both the developer and the end user.